Japanese electronics firms Sharp Corp and Pioneer Corp set their sights on a bigger share of the growing DVD recorder market on Tuesday with an agreement to cooperate on digital products. Sharp will integrate its semiconductor laser and video signal processing technologies with the DVD recording and playback technology of Pioneer, a top audio equipment maker.

They hope to launch rewritable DVD players, or DVD-RW, with a retail price of 100,000 yen ($934) — less than a half that of Pioneer’s current products, which sell for 250,000 yen — by March 2002, aiming to boost their market share amid competition with other top Japanese electronics makers Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd and Sony Corp Sharp and Pioneer also said they would team up to develop audio devices such as general audio machines and portable mini disk (MD) players.