The fourth largest manufacturer of recordable media in the world, Prodisc, announced today that it has made a request to a local Taiwanese court for emergency measures to temporarily prevent its creditors from seizing its assets. The Taiwanese company also announced that it will leave the market for recordable media and blames Dutch Royal Philips.
Prodisc is having legal disputes with Philips, which has demanded that Prodisc discs can no longer be exported from Taiwan until the company has paid it royalities. Philips also seized a few factories and four containers with recordable media in the harbour of Rotterdam.
Where Prodisc blames Philips, Philips has told the court that it has withdrawn its demand for a provisional seizure of Prodisc's bank deposits and factory buildings and signed a memorandum of understanding to continue royalty negotiations, however Prodisc has failed to fulfill its obligation and has continued to infringe Philips' patents.
The company has nearly 283 million dollar in outstanding debts and will now exit the recordable media business. The company was heavily competing with its largest competitors CMC, Ritek and Moser Baer India and had a marketshare of about 11%. It's expected that the exit of Prodisc could cool down the overheated recordable media market with low margins resulted from more supply than demand.
