Thread: Blu-ray player sales down despite format victory

Blu-ray player sales down despite format victory | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Looks like it wasn't the HD DVD/Blu-ray battle that was keeping potential customers away from high-definition video players after all.

The NPD Group released some of its retail sales tracking data Wednesday that showed sales of Blu-ray standalone players (not a PlayStation 3, combo player, or PC with Blu-ray drive) had mostly decreased since the beginning of the year.

Standalone Blu-ray player unit sales in the U.S. decreased 40 percent from January to February and saw a very slight increase (2 percent) between February and March, according to NPD.

HD DVD players fared even worse--player unit sales dropped 13 percent from January to February, and 65 percent from February to March--which was expected. Toshiba stopped production of HD DVD units in February, and the format's promotional group disbanded in March.

So what does this mean for Blu-ray player vendors? Why haven't sales experienced any sort of substantial uptick without a competitor? Prices offer one clue. Blu-ray player prices were at their peak for the year in mid-March, around $400. During the holiday shopping season the average price had been closer to $300.

But more likely is what NPD's high-def video analysts have been harping on for a while: that DVD is "good enough" for most consumers. And that the picture offered by a Blu-ray Disc and accompanying player doesn't appear so overwhelmingly better than a standard DVD and an upconverting player that many consumers can't justify the dramatically increased cost.

To that point, sales of significantly less expensive upconverting DVD players have actually increased 5 percent over the first quarter of 2008, compared with the same quarter a year ago. Standard DVD player sales dropped 39 percent over the same period.

Blu-ray player prices are going to have to drop dramatically, to around $200 probably, to make themselves more attractive to consumers outside of the early adopter/home theater enthusiast crowd. Sony, one of the largest producers of Blu-ray players, says $200 players aren't likely until next year at the earliest.


Just something I found. Make of it what you will.....

NightRyder

Hoping that might sooner rather than later lead to some price erosion. The cheapest BD players I'm seeing locally are still in the $400 range. I won't bite until maybe $250. If that takes until next year (per Sony) then so be it. I'll have plenty of HD DVD to watch until then! I guess buying an HD A1 for $97 ruined me...!

I'd say the first 2 or 3 years "belong" to the early adopters. For new technologies, there's always an early adopter (higher priced) period.

I can see a drop in sales after the holidays, and after gift cards from the holidays have been spent. But 40%? Even for the "slow period" of the year? Year end sales figures will be interesting. I'm still reading forecasts of tripled sales over 2007. We'll see.

Blu-ray: The Future Has Been Delayed - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

In fact, sales of Blu-ray standalone players remain so low that NPD has not yet released actual numbers, for fear that it would be easy to identify individual retailers. The research group will start to give actual figures later this year, said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at NPD.

And another article:


Analyst: HD DVD demise hasn't meant scramble for Blu-ray - Yahoo! News

Very nice. The BD group destroys HDDVD, it's got more disk space, it's more rugged, we can put uncompressed audio on it and NOW they say they cant press enough discs or get the price down to $200 till next year. Dumb effs

Originally Posted by MW390

Very nice. The BD group destroys HDDVD, it's got more disk space, it's more rugged, we can put uncompressed audio on it and NOW they say they cant press enough discs or get the price down to $200 till next year. Dumb effs

If it weren't for HD DVD, Blu-Ray would still be profile 1.0 with 1.1 coming this fall. Players would still be $1000 with the capabilities of the Sony BDP-S300. That is--no DTS-MA or Dolby TrueHD decoding and everyone would marvel at how great The House of Flying Daggers looks.

(In fairness, HD DVD would be 720p with $600 players with low bitrate Dolby Digital+, and transfers like Spartacus would be the norm.)

Maybe Toshiba was prudent to get out early. This is and will be a niche upper class videophile product for many years.

I keep saying that this technology is not mainstream. The techno geeks here may go crazy over it, but the avg consumer is'nt going to touch it under it is under the $200 mark.

Originally Posted by vurbano

Maybe Toshiba was prudent to get out early. This is and will be a niche upper class videophile product for many years.

Amazing. You never seem to tire of saying stuff like this. Must be having a hard time convincing yourself it's true.