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But what is really new about cassettes is their use as a vehicle for commercially recorded music. Philips, the giant Netherlands electrical manufacturer that originally developed them, has found a vast and expanding market in European homes. This year alone, the firm will turn out a million players and 9,000,000 cassettes containing 2,000 titles drawn from 90 record labels. Spurred by Philips' success, at least 40 other companies in the past year have begun moving their own cassette equipment into the U.S. market. By year's end, more than 1,000 titles will be available on cassettes in the U.S., priced mostly at $5.95 (v. an average of $6.95 for cartridges). And next year both Ford and General Motors plan to introduce cassette players as optional equipment in their new cars.
Sights & Sounds. The tape field is already crowded and confusing, and the technology—for cartridges as well as cassettes—is progressing rapidly and unpredictably. Some segments of the U.S. record industry, led by Columbia, Capitol and especially RCA Victor, are still betting heavily on cartridges, partly because they fear that the cassettes' potential as a home recording device would tend to undercut disk sales. On the other hand, many industry sources privately agree with the prediction of Rein Narma, consumer-products manager for Ampex, which markets all three types of tape. "We believe very strongly," says Narma, "that the cassette will be the eventual surviving tape format, and it is possible that within ten years it will make major inroads into the disk format."
Even if cassettes do not evenutally triumph in this field, Philips Executive Anton van den Brink points to another major role for them that may be no more than five years away: the video tape cassette, which would be hooked into television sets to provide an almost unlimited range of sights simultaneously with sounds.