Tatung, Roku team up on music player business

Taipei, May 27, 2005 (CENS)--Tatung Corp. and Roku Inc. co-announced yesterday that they would work together to develop digital-music players, with Tatung designing and manufacturing hardware and its partner developing software for the machines.

Their products will go to markets with two brands separately targeting the U.S. and European markets as well as the Asian market. Tatung will promote Elio-branded wares in Asia while its American partner will promote Ruko-branded products in the U.S. and Europe.

For the Taiwan-headquartered Tatung, the cooperation with Ruko is part of its business-diversification strategy. Tatung, which has specialized in household appliances, learned oxygen-manufacturing technology from American medication-equipment supplier SeQual through their partnership as well as entered into alliance with Intel Corp. and CMC Magnetics Corp. on digital household appliances before teaming up with Roku.

Tatung's executives pointed out that their company would not exclude any chances to partner with world leading suppliers of digital household appliances. They noted that Roku's founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Anthony Wood, is the inventor of the DreamWeaver and ReplyTV digital video players and his company's digital music player is the exclusive machine of its kind supporting Apple iTUNE music player.

So far, U.S. retailer Bestbuy has sold over 10,000 digital music players each of the past few months. Roku's players are retailed at US$199 to US$399 apiece through the store.

MP3 players are mobile equipment whereas digital music players are for household uses. Digital music players connect to PC via wireless local area network (WLAN). It can also hook up to on-line music stations.

Tatung executives pointed out that the two companies will begin to delver the players next half. Initial shipment volume is projected at 100,000 players a year.