Three companies from China, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the United States will jointly invest to produce advanced DVD disk mechanism chips in Shanghai.

With a total investment of US$10 million, the Shanghai Fangyuan Digital Technology Co. Ltd. the joint venture is expected to have an annual capacity of producing 5 million sets of DVD disk mechanism chips. Some three million sets of such chips will be manufactured with a selling turnover of 1 billion (US$120 million) this year, local sources said.

The investors are Shanghai Industrial Investment Co. from China, Digital Video Systems, Inc. of ROK and Digital Video Systems, Inc. from USA.

The new company is expected to net over 40 percent of the domestic market shares and its DVD products will be able to be exported more easily to Europe and Southeast Asia.