Philips has unveiled a joint venture with Taiwan's BenQ Corp to pool their development resources for drive technology for the PC industry using the DVD+RW format championed by the Dutch conglomerate.

With the format wars still underway between DVD+RW and its rival DVD-RW proposed by Pioneer, Eindhoven-based Philips is gathering allies around it as it endeavors to establish its preferred format as the de facto market standard.

Taipei-based BenQ, which was previously known as Acer Communications & Multimedia Inc, will now participate alongside Philips in the creation of a dedicated design house, focusing on developing turnkey drive designs. The resulting products will then be manufactured by each partner and marketed separately.

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