Rich Fiscus
14 May 2008 14:35
At last week's MEDIA-TECH Expo in Frankfurt, Germany, media analyst Richard Cooper of Screen Digest predicted that the struggling US economy will have a major impact on the growth of Blu-ray in 2008. During his presentation on the future of Blu-ray Cooper backed up his assertion with some interesting figures, largely from DVD sales, showing that US households have historically purchase more titles annually than those in Europe. Based in part on those figures he sees Blu-ray sales continuing to remain low during 2008.
As we reported last month, sales of Blu-ray players dropped significantly after the end of the so-called format war with HD DVD, and have yet to return to their January levels.
His presentation also included detailed analysis of the affect PS3 sales may have on the market. He pointed to a recent study showing use of the game console as a BD (Blu-ray Disc) player in the US increasing from the end of 2007 through the beginning of 2008 as good news for movie sales. Also of note, however, was the competition for consumer dollars between games and movies. Such competition could prove problematic for the Blu-ray industry as long as the game console dominates the player market.
Of course PS3 figures aren't quite as important in Europe where, as Cooper pointed out, the adoption rate for the console is much lower. He attributes this largely to its relatively high price. It will be interesting to see whether European prices change if the economy becomes a more significant factor in US sales over the course of this year - especially during the Christmas season.
It's also worth noting that if you were to combine major analysts' predictions over the last 2 years you'd find that both Blu-ray and HD DVD should have won and shut the other completely out of the market. Additionally the victory was predicted to occur at any of several points between 2006 and 2010. Such speculation is always based on educated guessing, especially where new technology is concerned.
You can find more information on the presentation at the the MEDIA-TECH Expo website.