Japanese electronics makers Sony Corp and NEC Corp won permission from the European Commission on March 31 to set up a joint venture for optical disk drives.
The two companies, seeking to cope with intense price competition, will transfer their optical drive businesses to a new entity, Sony NEC Optiarc Inc, which will start operations on April 3. The deal was first announced last November.
The venture will control some 20 percent of the global market, second only to Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS), a venture between Japan's Hitachi Ltd and South Korea's LG Electronics Inc, NEC has said previously.
Sony will hold a 55 percent stake in the venture, which will design and make DVD and CD drives for personal computers and other products. The new company will have annual sales of about 220 billion yen ($1.9 billion), NEC said.
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