| | If the Blu-ray Player market in Germany is any indication, finally Bu-ray sales may be kicking in. With average prices at the 300 Euros barrier, GfK reports more than 30,000 units sold in Germany in December (out of 110,000 for the year).
Blu-ray suffers from competition from online delivery but also from upscaling technology. With more than 11 million HD-ready or Full HD TV sets on the market in Germany, the market potential is there but buyers penalized Blu-Ray for the prolonged standards war and high hardware prices.
Already 17% of standard DVD players sold (and even 53% of the DVD Recorders in December) has the ability to upscale standard DVD signals to nearly HD quality.
The average price of 95 Euros for a standard DVD Player (with upscaling functionality about 200 Euros) is far below the average price of a Blu-ray Player. Even DVD Recorders with an integrated HDD were on average only marginally more expensive than Blu-ray Players.
At Futuresource Consulting, senior market analyst Mai Hoang says, “Last year in the U.S. alone, BD video retail sales increased by a whopping 320% to 24 million units; and we’re going to see momentum continuing in 2009, with over 80 million disc sales forecast.” The uptake of BD in Western Europe is still at the early-adopter stage, but it continues to gather momentum.
Go GfK on Blu-ray in Germany
