News

Year 3 Blue-ray player sales outstripping year 3 DVD by six to one

posted on 16 June 2008 10:49

Much faster ramp up; W Europe data

Comparing player sales at year three of availability for both Blu-ray and DVD shows Blu-ray racing ahead more than six times faster.

This is according to research firm FutureSource and its view of the third year of Western European Blu-ray player availability compared to the equivalent year of DVD player availability. (Full size chart downloadable below.)

Jim Bottoms, the Corporate Development MD for Futuresource, said: “One of the questions we are asked on a regular basis is how does Blu-ray (BD) uptake compare with the uptake of DVD in the early years, and how do the BD player forecasts look alongside DVD player adoption."

“Focusing on like-for-like coverage of Western Europe and comparing the first few years of uptake, the early indications are that BD player sales are running way ahead of DVD after the same time period. 2008 represents year 3 for BD and here at Futuresource Consulting, we anticipate more than 10 million players, including PS3, in use by the end of this year. Looking back to DVD’s early years, we see that closer to 1.5 million DVD players were installed by the end of year 3."

This finding concurs with a ramp up of multi-layer Blu-ray manufacturing machine orders http://www.blocksandfiles.com/article/5489 and Japanese market findings.

Bottoms added: “Looking forward BD installations are projected to continue to run significantly ahead of DVD. The timing of the PS3 launch has clearly provided a big boost to the initial uptake of BD; with a number of hot games titles now starting to emerge and console prices continuing to fall we can expect to see continued strong uptake."

“Also important is the competitive retail environment, with high street names vying for market share in BD video player sales. ... Longer term, as player prices continue to fall, title availability grows and awareness increases, BD players will become the product of choice – given the fact that they also play DVD and CD media – and there will come a time when the branded suppliers focus on this higher capacity drive, mirroring the trend we saw with DVD players replacing CD decks.”

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}