Sony Takes Axe to Betamax
What VHS couldn’t do, digital did. Sony Corp’s Betamax video tape recorder, which famously lost the 1980s video format war but held on for decades as a niche product, will finally be laid to rest after digital formats delivered a death blow to its prospects.
Sony said on Tuesday it would only make 2,000 more Betamax machines before discontinuing the product altogether, ending its 27-year history — spent mostly in the shadow of the Matsushita group’s rival VHS format.
“With digital machines and other new recording formats taking hold in the market, demand has continued to decline and it has become difficult to secure parts,” Sony said in a statement.
Betamax — held up as an example of how the first to market is not guaranteed commercial success — had already been pulled from overseas markets in the 1990s, a Sony spokesman said.
Production of the machine in the last business year to March totaled 2,800 units, a tiny fraction of the 2.3 million made in the peak year of 1984 and the 18 million made over its lifetime.
Sony said it would continue to offer repairs and manufacture tapes for the format, adding the move would not affect its Betacam products for the broadcasting industry.
Rapid sales growth in digital versatile disc (DVD) players and recorders has posed a threat in recent years not just to the remnants of Betamax but to the mainstream VHS videotape recorders pioneered by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, maker of Panasonic goods, and Victor Co of Japan, a subsidiary.
In the DVD arena as well, the industry is groping for ways to set standards without risking a destructive format war.
A fragmentation of standards for DVD recorders has been blamed for delaying the take-off of that market, and a potential format war is also brewing over next-generation DVD products.
Sony, Matsushita and seven other industry giants joined hands early this year on a common format for DVD players using blue laser light, which are due out as early as next year and will vastly increase disc storage capacity.
But Toshiba Corp, a pioneer in DVD technology, said this week it aimed to offer an alternative blue-laser format it believes will be cheaper and more compatible with existing red-laser technology.
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