Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA is stepping up its efforts in the erasable optical disk drive business by putting its interests into a joint venture with Eastman Kodak Co and its Verbatim unit, which showed an erasable drive about three years ago, but has not yet shipped it. Olivetti’s interests are in Laserdrive Ltd, a privately-held Santa Clara, California company, and, subject to the approval of Laserdrive’s shareholders, Olivetti plans that it and Kodak should each hold 40.17% of the company. The plan is for Olivetti adn Kodak to combine the 3.5 erasable optical disk programme at Verbatim Corp with the 5.25 write-once disk effort at Laserdrive, and the resulting firm will manufacture and market future generations of Verbatim’s drive and continue to offer Laserdrive’s existing write-once optical disk subsystems. Verbatim will sell optical media to Laserdrive and other companies.
