According to projections released by Futuresource Consulting, they forecast 45 million Blu-ray discs to be sold in total in the US this year alone, which will be a 4-fold increase over last year. Since the start of the year, Blu-ray player sales have been picking up, which in turn means more consumers getting Blu-ray titles to play on their equipment. The PlayStation 3 also plays a big role in boosting Blu-ray’s market share.
However, despite increasing sales of Blu-ray players and PS3s, sales have not rocketed like Sony and its partners were hoping for and even the studios have also been fairly disappointed with Blu-ray disc sales. Instead, many HDTV owners have decided to invest in less expensive upscaling players to try getting an improved picture from their existing DVD collection.
One drawback with investing in a Blu-ray player is that the consumer needs to purchase their existing titles again on Blu-ray in order to take advantage of the higher picture quality offered by Blu-ray. Some other consumers have turned to video download services. The advantage with Internet based video-on demand services is that those which offer movies in high definition do not require an expensive player, assuming the consumer has a powerful enough PC and broadband connection to play the HD content.
According to the projections, Futuresource Consulting believes that between 40% and 50% of video disc sales within the US and Western Europe will be on Blu-ray disc by 2012. At present, the firm says that 5% to 6% of the major titles are already sold on Blu-ray and they predict this percentage to reach 10% to 12% by the 4th quarter. By the end of the year, Futuresource expects entry level Blu-ray players to fall to or below $250 and or even closer to $200 to push sales during the holiday season.
