Optical disc drive (ODD) maker Lite-On IT has announced consolidated revenues of NT$4.47 billion (US$151.28 million) for March, up 17.1% on month, but down 7.1% on year, while the company's consolidated revenues for the first quarter reached NT$12.06 billion, down 13.6% on year.

Since the PC market has already emerged from a hard drive shortage in March with demand for PC starting to stabilize, shipments of slim ODDs for notebooks, enjoyed an on-month growth close to 30%, while shipments of half-height ODDs for desktops maintained flat on month.

However, as online storage and cloud computing are becoming popular, Lite-On are aggressive entering new businesses such as car electronics, solid state drive (SSD) and medical electronics and is aiming to reduce the revenue proportion of its ODD business from 80% to 70% with SSD, car electronics and gaming ODD businesses to share the remaining 30%.

The company's SSD business in March enjoyed close to 30% growth in both revenues and shipments on month, while its revenues in the first quarter also achieved close to 60% growth sequentially and over 300% on year. Lite-On expects its SSD shipments will reach 1.5-1.8 million units in 2012, up from 300,000-400,000 units in 2011, to account for 10% of the global market share.