Blu-ray’s Four-Year Surge Starts Now
Blu-ray discs will outsell standard DVDs in the U.S. by a 3-to-2 margin by 2012 as Blu-ray player prices fall, retailers clear more space for the format and more people use videogame consoles and other devices to watch the high-definition discs, according to a report released this week.
Blu-ray will overtake standard DVDs as the primary form of content software within the next four years, accounting for 61% of the U.S. DVDs sold by 2012, U.K.-based consultant Futuresource says. Such growth will easily outpace that in western Europe, where Blu-ray will account for between 39% and 50% of DVD sales by 2012, according to the report.
In June, trade group Entertainment Merchants Association said U.S. Blu-ray revenue will reach $9.5 billion by 2012.
“Much of the drive behind this increase is coming from growing consumer awareness and falling hardware prices, coupled with PlayStation 3 owners increasingly using their consoles for video playback,” Futuresource analyst Jack Wetherill said in a statement.
With Sony’s Blu-ray format emerging as the victor in the high-definition disc war over Toshiba’s competing HD DVD, such accelerated growth has already begun. Blu-ray’s share of U.S. DVDs sold for best-selling titles will double to as much as 12% by the end of the year, as retailers are likely to drop Blu-ray player prices to as low as $250 by the holiday season, Mr. Wetherill says. Blu-ray disc unit sales this year will jump fivefold from 2007, Futuresource said.
U.S. revenue from Blu-ray sales and rentals for the first half of the year was more than $200 million, representing a 300% jump from a year earlier; that comes despite overall home entertainment spending being little changed at about $10.1 billion, according to data compiled by Video Business magazine and Rentrak.
Blu-ray sell-through market share in France and the U.K. will more than double next year to as much as 6%, according to Mai Hoang, lead analyst in Futuresource’s home video team.
Tv guide -
I think this is a long time, especially in terms of video game systems
“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.
