Blu-Ray hardware sales figures drop in 2008
The format war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray is finally over and one would have thought that this would have a positive effect on Blu-Ray sales especially from the customer group that decided to wait and see which side would win the war. Now that HD-DVD lost the format war it should have been clear that consumers would buy Blu-Ray players. Apparently though they are not.
Figures for the first quarter of 2008 have just been released and Blu-Ray standalone player sales dropped by 40% between January and February and rose by only 2% in March. Analysts had predicted that the winning format would see a strong surge in hardware sales but this is not happening.
The price of the Blu-Ray player cannot possibly be the reason for the sharp drop. The players were as expensive when Blu-Ray was still competing with HD-DVD and the prices have not changed a lot since then. One possible reason could be that the customers who wanted to purchase a Blu-Ray player have already done so and that the others simply do not want to pay that much money for a movie player.
Add to that the Internet update problematic and horror stories that some early Blu-Ray players will not be able to play new movies because of technology updates and you pretty much got it summed up.
Would not it be funny if no format would win the war ? That Blu-Ray would not win either because most consumers don't need it ? That another company would come up with a better format, without DRM, for a lesser price ? I would love to see that. How about you?
Update: Four years later and Blu-Ray is still the latest high-end consumer product that you can buy to view HD contents at home. It is not clear if we will ever see a successor for the format considering that everyone seems to jump on the streaming bandwagon nowadays.
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That Blu-Ray would not win either because most consumers don’t need it ? That another company would come up with a better format, without DRM, for a lesser price ? I would love to see that. How about you ?
Oh, sure!
My family is now happy with DVD player, which can play DivX and Xvid files from any type of DVD disk ;)
It would be nice to have more capacity on disk, than DVD can offer, but I don’t see now critical need for that, and I don’t need any DRM and big expenses.
While it does in fact use a blue-violet laser, it’s actually called “Blu-ray”. With that out of the way, I thought it was a solid article. Although I don’t plan on getting an HDTV for some time to come (or a high-def disc player for that matter), I had hoped that with the format war over, Blu-ray could go ahead full steam and establish itself as a solid successor to DVD. The more I see the statistics lately, the more it seems like this will take a long time or may not happen at all. One now has to wonder what, if anything, might be able to surpass Blu-ray as a successful format. Some are placing bets on digital downloads, but I’m not sure it’s ready for mass consumption yet.