Blu-ray Sales Made Market Strides In 2008
By Greg Tarr -- TWICE, January 12, 2009
Las Vegas — The Blu-ray Disc format took huge steps forward in the final weeks of 2008 to help the format continue to shine as one of the more successful new CE product launches in recent history, said Andy Parsons, Blu-ray Disc promotions group chairman.
Parsons cited DisplaySearch estimates showing 10.7 million stand-alone Blu-ray Disc players and PlayStation 3 gaming consoles had shipped to retail since the launch of the Blu-ray Disc format 2.5 years ago.
“A lot of people think of DVD as an overnight success, but actually if you look back, we have some data from CEA market research that shows three years into the launch of DVD 5.4 million players had shipped into the U.S. market. So if you are comparing DVD to Blu-ray we are actually looking at a considerably larger number of players that have shipped in only 2.5 years into the life of Blu-ray, so we are doing quite well.”
Parsons said that in 2008 the industry saw a three-fold increase in the sales of Blu-ray Disc players compared to 2007.
“So, the rate is picking up quite rapidly in people acquiring players,” he said.
Most importantly, Parsons pointed to numbers showing the U.S. household penetration rate of Blu-ray Disc players.
According to market research firm Adams Media Research, the rate of household penetration of Blu-ray Disc players is far outpacing other key consumer electronics devices at the three-year points in their rollouts.
Color TV registered a little more than 3 percent household penetration after three years, CD was a little less than 2 percent after three years, and DVD saw about 4 percent penetration after three years. In contrast, Blu-ray players are seeing a nearly 8 percent household penetration rate after two and half years, Parsons said.
In software, nearly 1,100 Blu-ray titles are now available in the U.S. market, Parsons said.
In other milestones, “The Dark Knight” was the first Blu-ray Disc title to register 1 million disc sales.
Also, October stood as the format’s first 2 million disc month. The record rose to more than 3 million units in November, and reached more than 8 million discs in December.
“During this fourth quarter of the year, in one of the most difficult retail quarters in history, Blu-ray Disc still managed to grow very significantly,” Parsons said.
In 2007 the industry registered 5.67 million disc sales, which rose to 24.09 million disc sales in 2008 alone.
In total more than 30 million Blu-ray Discs have been sold in the U.S. market since the format’s launch, Parsons said.
Moving beyond high definition, Parsons said a significant number of players being introduced at International CES will incorporate Blu-ray Profile 2.0 spec (BD-Live) interactive broadband capability.
In addition, Blu-ray Disc titles that add a “Digital Copy” version of the movie for downloads to mobile devices to permit viewing in standard definition have grown to 53 titles, a Parsons said “I think we can expect to see a lot more.”
Although a number of manufacturers are showing demonstrations of 3-D TV technology using Blu-ray Disc players as the source device, Parsons said “at this time there is really no formal proposal [for 3-D] within the BDA.”
“We think that Blu-ray is really the best packaged media platform for 3-D, and we are interested in studying how to combine the best HD experience with the best 3-D experience,” Parsons said.
For 2009 Tom Adams, principal of Adams Media Research, said his firm is calling for Blu-ray Disc player sales to probably double or triple in 2009.
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