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Subscribe toIs Blu-Ray Really Struggling as Much as the Media Claims?
May 8, 2008 – 11:45 am,Hi everybody. Over the past week or so, many media outlets ranging from Yahoo to CNN have been announcing steady or declining sales of Blu-Ray players since the fall of the HD DVD format. Can this really be true? Have you, the consumer begun to speak and say that DVD’s are good enough?There is no real simple answer to this question. I believe that the media is jumping to conclusions based on the lagging sales numbers for stand-alone players. The problem with judging whether or not Blu-Ray is growing in popularity based on stand-alone players is that those numbers don’t include the largest base of Blu-Ray owners, the Playstation 3.
In March, Sony sold an estimated 257,000 PS3’s alone. That Brings the total number of Playstation 3’s sold so far to be estimated at about 11 million units. According to Warner Home Video, 80% of those players are used to watch Blu-Ray movies. That brings the total to over 8 million Playstation 3’s being used to watch the new format with an estimated 200,000 new units that will be used as a Blu-Ray player per month at that rate.
The Blu-Ray stand-alone player market is also at somewhat of a lull at the moment because most manufacturers of the players are preparing to release new models of players. Companies like Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony are allowing the inventory of their existing models dwindle while they are launching new, profile 2.0 players to take their place.
With the newest models having been just released, or on schedule to be released in the very near future sales are bound to pick back up for stand-alone players. Pair that with the thought that these new models being released now or in the near future will most likely have a significant price drop just in time for the holidays, and it appears to me that Blu-Ray will continue to expand the number of consumers it has.
What do you think? Are you a current Blu-Ray owner? Do you plan to switch to Blu-Ray in the future, or are you planning to stick with DVD?