Sony expects to ship six times as many of its Blu-Ray high-definition DVD players as anticipated, while Toshiba has slashed its U.S. sales estimates.
A jubilant
Sony appears to be winning the first battles in the HD DVD/Blu-Ray technology war.
The company has announced that shipments of its Blu-Ray DVD players to the U.S. could massively increase this year – from 100,000 to 600,000.
However, it gives credit not to the players themselves, but the movies coming out on the Blu-Ray format. Of the top 20 new films released on DVD, some 14 or 15 have been exclusive to Blu-Ray, driving sales of the players, according to a Sony spokesman.
Sony sold less than 100,000 of its new players during 2006, but other factors have helped spur figures. The Sony Playstation 3 console comes equipped with a Blu-Ray player.
However, as Sony has greatly upped its sales estimates, its main competitor in the market,
Toshiba, has lowered theirs. Toshiba has lowered expectations of U.S. sales for its HD DVD player from 1.8 million to one million units, while also doubtful about global figures.
“Obviously we are going to have to lower our previous global estimate,” said Toshiba's Yoshihide Fujii.
The battle between the incompatible HD DVD/Blu-Ray formats has carried echoes of the VHS v. Betamax duel of the 1980s, and as that proved, there can only be one winner.
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Rob Chase on Jun 14th, 2007 at 8:57 AM:
I think it's interesting that, despite the many failure stories about the PS3 going around, I keep reading that the PS3 has contributed greatly to the success of Sony's Blu-Ray venture. I'd be interested to see the actually sales figures to show how much the PS3 is really helping...