Blu-ray Market Share...Drops?
September 24, 2008 | by Geoff Duncan
Sales data from Nielsen VideoScan found Blu-ray's share of the video disc mark actually dropped during the week ending September 14.
When competing high-definition disc format HD DVD threw in the towel in early 2008, most industry watchers were expecting a surge of consumer interest in Sony's victorious Blu-ray format. Now that the battle was over, market watchers reasoned, consumers would flock to the high-definition world, assured that their movie purchases would be compatible with future gear for a long time to come.
Except it hasn't happened, at least not to the degree industry watchers expected. Several factors play into consumer's less-than-enthusiastic embrace of Blu-ray, including a general economic downturn, Blu-ray gear hanging on to comparatively high prices, and consumers turning to alternative sources of HD content like high-definition cable, satellite, and download services. Also factor in increasing quality (and affordability) of upscaling DVD players, and many consumers just don't feel the urge to dive into Blu-ray.
Now, new numbers from market-watcher Nielsen VideoScan finds that Blu-ray's share of the video disc market actually dropped during the week ending September 14, declining to an even 8 percent of the overall market. (Yes, the rest of the market is standard DVDs.) The drop represents a proportionate 13.4 decline over Blu-ray's showing the previous week.
Earlier this year, Sony executives predicted Blu-ray sales would account for as much as 50 percent of the home video disc market by the end of 2008. However, now industry experts believe Blu-ray won't have much of an impact on the overall market during 2008, barring extraordinary price cuts and consumer interest during the upcoming holiday season.
Post Your Comment...Comments
Kevin Bush on Sep 24th, 2008 at 9:02 AM:
lol, I think it's hilarious how defensive people get about Sony... it's like their favorite team in the AV world.
Kerbe on Sep 24th, 2008 at 11:22 AM:
I think the drop in bluray market shares is primarily due to the pricing. The players are still too high to attract newcomers to the technology and the media prices are too high to encourage people, like myself, to grow my collection of Bluray movies. For the time being, my DVD collection is upscaled nicely on my PS3 and the prices of DVDs are almost too good to be true. I would like to see the common price for Bluray movies to sit around $19.99, any higher and I am likely to put it back. Now for Iron Man, I can allow a little splurging... what a great movie.
Jason Howard on Sep 24th, 2008 at 11:26 AM:
I truely think new services coming out for HD (Verizon FIOS, etc), along with the fact that Blu-ray is still costly in terms of movies and players will cause a larger down turn in Blu-ray. Seriously, who really wants to pay $30+ for a blu-ray movie that was originally released on DVD 10 years ago?
They need to really start pumping up the sales. For example, how about just released, new Blu-ray movies being $19.99 for the first two weeks?
Peter on Sep 24th, 2008 at 1:52 PM:
After wasting $449 for an HD-DVD player I resolved to forget about HD players of any kind for the foreseeable future. It's quite simple actually, "once burned twice shy".
DaveBG on Sep 24th, 2008 at 5:05 PM:
HD DVD already proved that no-one cares until player prices get down to $99 and movies go below $20.
The really big problem that the Blu-ray evangelists have is that there is a hell of a lot of high def that looks extremely ordinary.
Asking us to shell out a load on the type of huge HD TV and the expensive audio kit required to make the most of Blu-ray (over upscaled DVD) for what is often a very marginal improvement is not a very convincing strategy.
It's a real shame cos high def on disc would have been nice - especially if it could just have morphed into the same DVD everyone was buying (as it could have done with an HD DVD win thanks to combo & Twin Discs).
Sheer blind greed got in the way and it's turned out that by choosing Blu-ray the CE & movie industry has accidentally ensured that high def movies on disc never break beyond the high margin niche.
Blu-ray is just like Laserdisc or SACD or DVD-Audio.
It's great if you want the current utmost degree of a/v 'quality' - but most will not care nor be interested in paying the huge premium that is demanded for it.
DVD is simply too close, particularly when upscaled on the size of HD TV most will bother with (ie the 32" - 50" sizes).
Not everyone is so obsessed with TV or movies as to wish to turn their living rooms over to be a mini-cinema.
For a hell of a lot of people it's all still 'just TV'.
Dario on Sep 25th, 2008 at 1:46 AM:
Have to agree with the comment above ... "Sheer blind greed got in the way", but, you know, it`s a Sony ... and Sony have never had a format that sells.
Peter Reime on Sep 26th, 2008 at 6:40 AM:
There is no denying that the picture quality with Bluray can be fantastic, however I have found that, when watching a disc from my HD collection, I generally notice the increased quality for the first 5 minutes of the film, after that I get too engrossed in the movie to actually notice. There might be the odd moment in the film where you notice a particularly beautiful shot, but I have found a movie in upscaled SD is no less enjoyable than a HD version. That is one reason why I haven't started adding Bluray to my HD DVD collection. It simply isn't worh it other than on a few premium titles.
KJ on Sep 26th, 2008 at 8:38 AM:
DVD isn't without it's faults either. I am about to take my brand new $400 player back to CC. The G/F just got Made of Honor in the Netflix, and the damn thing won't play - and it's not the disc being scratched. The Effin copy protection means the thing won't play. It's a DVD!!! I am so close to just buying a blu-ray burner and a stack of blank media and just hitting the torrent sites.
The discs are way Way WAY over priced. The players are worse. And to top it all off there is no guarantee that any of it will work in the end. I'll skip the 'special features' and just grab my stuff off the web.
Corporate Greed is the problem here.
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Greg on Sep 24th, 2008 at 8:57 AM:
Erm, guys. I don't know if you are new in the AV biz or what, but the market shares estimated by Nielsen on a week to week basis are changing every single week, the week before having seen a huge increase of the market share at 12% (haven't reported that though have we? :) ). 8% is back to the average level seen weeks before that (much increased compared to about 3% early 2008), and is mostly related to lackluster new releases.
Now let's wait for the slew of big productions to come out, starting with Iron Man :)