Andre Yoskowitz
21 Nov 2008 17:48
Stan Glasgow, president and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics America has said that the company believes sales of standalone Blu-ray (excluding the PS3) players will fall just short of expectations and the company will not meet its worldwide sales goal, due mainly to the global economic downturn.
Glasgow also pointed out the obvious when he said that Blu-ray movies were expensive and when they become more affordable, the standard should see a significant boost in interest.
The BDA and Sony had set a sales target of five million standalone players worldwide by the end of 2008 but Glasgow believes the year will end with only 4.5 million devices sold.
“It’s not that far off of it. Maybe 10% off of what we had thought. It’s truly one of the items that has performed well during this economic mess,” added Glasgow.
When talking about the prices of the discs, he added, “They (movie studios) need to make money, and the packaged media (discs) is a critical way for them to make money so I understand their problems also. But I’d love to see those prices come down, as well as the price of Blu-ray players, to drive adoption.”
Glasgow also importantly added that sales would slump just like everything else in the world would, thanks to the worldwide economic recession.
“We expected the TV industry to just skyrocket this holiday season. It’s going to grow, but its not skyrocketing. There are less consumers willing to spend money. I believe 80% of that is just consumer confidence. They don't feel as comfortable making a major investment in a television.”