Problem solved?

Sony Computer Entertainment plans to ship 1 million Playstation 3 units into the Japanese market and more than 1 million into the U.S. market by the end of this year. The company expects to begin delivering PS3s to the European market by the spring. If all goes according to plan, Sony will ship 6 million units by March.

"The fab is concentrating its resources and efforts to produce sufficient diodes in time" for that schedule, said a Sony spokesman, expressing confidence that the volume targets would be reached.

Robert Steele, an analyst with Strategies Unlimited (Mountain View, Calif.), said it's fair to say Sony has exorcised its blue-laser demons, given that the company has shipped nearly 500,000 PS3 units this month. "Once you can get to the point where you are making tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands, you've probably got the problem under control," Steele said. "But that doesn't mean it's easy."

Meanwhile, it appears as though one company with a long history of blue-laser diode work may have thrown in the towel, or at least scaled back R&D on the project. A spokeswoman for Cree Inc. (Durham, N.C.) initially told EE Times that the company was no longer developing blue-laser diodes. In a follow-up e-mail she said the company was still working on the technology but could not "discuss this effort at this point."

Cree, which markets chips for LED solid-state lighting, power and communications, has been conducting blue-laser diode R&D since the early 1990s but has never offered a commercial product. As far back as 1995, Cree was publicizing the prototype development of a superbright blue LED made from GaN and silicon carbide. At one point, Cree had been receiving funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for blue-laser diode development. Last year Cree was awarded a $26.9 million Darpa contract along with Raytheon Co. to develop GaN chips, but it is unclear whether Cree is still being funded for work on blue lasers.

Cree's most recent annual report, for the fiscal year ended June 25, stated that the company was working with a partner—known to be Japan's Rohm Corp.—to commercialize the technology. A subsequent regulatory filing for the quarter ended Sept. 24 does not reference the project.

According to Strategies Unlimited's Steele, Cree used to discuss the blue-laser diode R&D project in every quarterly financial conference call but has stopped talking about it over the past few quarters. Cree had never been very forthcoming with details about the project, but neither has it ever explicitly said it has ceased development, Steele said. He speculated that the company has put the project "on the back burner."

"Since[the project is] not going to turn into money anytime soon-and they certainly have products that are generating short-term revenue-I could kind of understand them de-emphasizing it if the progress has been slow," Steele said.