Blu-Ray movie sales for 2008 were 4x that of 2007.

More info:

http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/01/08/live-from-the-2009-blu-ray-disc-association-press-conference/

Update:

"It turned out to be a phenomenal year for Blu-ray," said Tom Adams of Adams Media Research. In the fourth quarter of 2008, which is only too important for tech companies, U.S. consumers bought up 28.6 million Blu-ray titles."

http://news.therecord.com/printArticle/469824

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/16575.cfm

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090109/ap_on_hi_te/tec_gadget_show_blu_ray

According to Videoscan 22.7 million DVDs were sold for North America in 1999 as a whole.

Older news:

- Blu-Ray bestseller Dark Knight sold 1.7 million units its first week in 2008.

- For comparison Matrix DVD bestseller in 1999 sold 780K units its first week.

Blu-Ray will soon take over, no doubt. The advent of cheap BR players is really helping the format's adoption - especially in places like UK, where they are significantly cheaper than PS3.

But that can't be because BluRay is a fad and will die soon and dl's take over and new formats and blah blah blah.
I hope this year will be even better for BluRay so people realize that this format is not stillborn no matter how much some people wish it were.

"multiple device households counted twice"
But still, awesome news for a change!
6% already - and that's just the US

Yes entry pricing plays an important role. But from a technical perspective PS3's are still amongst the very best.

Of course the PS3 unlike dedicated players provide a lot of additional features, more storage, lots of additonal features, functionalities and services (PlayTV, Playstation Home, video store, etc). Of course the best 2008 line-up of games and seemingly for 2009 as well.

I disagree, people will not continue to buy $30 hd movies when they can get a similar quality on dvd for ~$10+ cheaper. I don't know if you've heard but the United States is shedding 600,000 jobs a month. Unemployment is going to hit 7% in the next couple of weeks with no sign of slowing. Most of these jobs are held by people in their 20's and 30's, the market that blu-ray is targeting. From what I can tell (http://www.blu-raydiscnews.com/2008/12/year-to-date-blu-ray-vs-dvd-sales-data.html) blu ray only sold 4% vs 96% dvd total sales ytd 11/16/08. And this is in the United States. It needs way more sales just to sustain relevance. Personally my friends are starting to soak up hd dvd's because they can get them for dirt cheap, i am talking 4-8 bucks for essentially the same hd experience. I'll buy The Big Lebowski for 5.17 (http://product.half.ebay.com/The-Big-Lebowski_W0QQtgZinfoQQprZ58748669) on an hd dvd over $13 dvd any day of the week. I know...Crazy American Consumers....

@ Spankey

per http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/cemadvdsales.html :
Year 1 DVD (USA): 315,136
Year 2 DVD (USA): 1,089,261
Year 3 DVD (USA): 4,019,389
Total: 5,423,786 in first 3 years in the USA

PS3 'America' sales: 7.51M
PS3 estimated USA sales (90% of America): 6,759,000

So, from a *very* rough approximation from the chart: 2-3M standalone players probably?

Twice? :-/

picture says "once"

@ alpha_dk

Adams Media Research estimates that for only the year 2008 3.1 million standalone Blu-Ray players have been sold in the US (beating their forecast).