The results of a new survey by Harris Interactive show that despite winning the hi-def format war Blu-ray isn’t showing any real signs it will become a mainstream success. In fact they indicate more people own standalone HD DVD players (11%) than Blu-ray players (7%).
When you factor in PS3 game consoles and the Xbox 360 add on HD DVD drive the numbers shift to favor Blu-ray, but it’s not as big a margin as you might expect. Even including these numbers, Blu-ray only holds a 2% lead (16% vs 14%).
Clearly those numbers don’t look right if you assume people are buying these players for their compatibility with the high definition format of their choice.
Unless the format of their choice is upscaled DVD. And in fact that’s what most people who responded to the survey seem to be indicating.
Even though respondents said they would buy fewer standard definition discs this year than last, they aren’t planning to convert those purchases to Blu-ray titles.
Barely more than a fifth of Blu-ray owners surveyed are replacing the titles in their DVD collection with Blu-ray versions. More than 40% are waiting for disc prices to drop before they expand their collection of high definition discs.
The picture gets worse when you look at people who don’t own Blu-ray players yet. More than 90% don’t plan to be buying one this year either.
This doesn’t mean manufacturers can’t change their minds with the right pricing strategy. But simply selling a player also won’t guarantee disc sales.
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Result for: numbers don
Despite Blu-ray’s victory over rival format HD DVD, it seems Blu-ray player sales are falling or seeing little to no growth in various markets.
The latest figures, according to the NPD Group, show that Blu-ray standalone players sales (excluding the PlayStation 3 and Blu-ray PC drives) have mostly decreased since the beginning of 2008, or seen no growth. Sales dropped 40 percent in the US from January to February and saw only a 2 percent increase from February to March.
The numbers don’t seem to make sense though. HD DVD died out in February, yet sales have sputtered. One likely reason is price. Blu-ray players were selling for an average of $400 USD during March while just 3 months earlier in the holiday season they were selling for closer to $320 USD. An even better reason, according to NPD, is that standard definition DVD is “good enough” for the average consumer and that the upgraded video, audio and features just aren’t worth the premium in price, at least not yet.
To back up their analysis, NPD cites that upconverting DVD player sales have increased 5 percent year over year so far compared to standard DVD player sales which have dropped 40 percent in the same period.
