Rich Fiscus
6 Feb 2009 11:13
At least once a month we seem to publish the latest figures from some faceless group of "media analysts" claiming to have consulted their crystal ball and divined the future of the video market. February's flavor of the month this year is SNL Kagan. Two days ago they issued a press release boldly predicting Blu-ray will dominate the home video market in 2014 only to be overtaken by online video three years later. It makes for good press, but why should we believe them?
Let's start with the obvious fact. Nobody knows the future. I'd be willing to bet there was no 2001 SNL Kagan report correctly predicting DVD sales for this year. There's simply no way they could have known what would be happening with Blu-ray, online video, or even the economy.
I don't have a 2001 report to prove that with, but as it happens I do have another press release from just before the Christmas shopping season last year. If they really can forecast sales it should look about the same as their current report right? Well it doesn't.
According to the November 2008 press release "SNL Kagan estimates there will be 46.2 million high-definition player homes, with the number increasing to 107.1 million by 2017." Meanwhile the latest guess for 2017, just three months later, is "115.2 million high-definition DVD homes."
Taking out the approximately 3 million Blu-ray capable homes right now (or 10 million including PS3s) that's around an 8% difference. Have things changed so much in three months? Actually yes they have. We've seen the Christmas 2008 sales figures. And guess what, they will change again in the next six months, and next Christmas, and on, and on, and on.
So the next time you see numbers from a bunch of media analysts, ask yourself this. If they know so much about the future why aren't the playing the stock market instead of selling data about Blu-ray, or DVD, or online video, or whatever it is? Instead of starting a flamewar on some anonymous internet forum, spare yourself some headaches and high blood pressure and just make up your own numbers. You can always revise them when the next report comes out.