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Our Blogs The BeerFiles Sony claims Blu-ray has over 95% of Australian HD market
Our Blogs The BeerFiles Sony claims Blu-ray has over 95% of Australian HD market | Sony claims Blu-ray has over 95% of Australian HD market |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Wednesday, 05 December 2007 | |
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Claimed findings from the study include: • Blu-ray hardware, incorporating all home entertainment Blu-ray players and PlayStation 3, outsells HD-DVD hardware (including Xbox 360 HD DVD drive) by 26 to 1 • More than 18,000 Blu-ray Disc titles in total were sold in October 2007, while around 2,000 HD-DVDs were sold during the same period HD DVD has been a late starter in the Australian market, with many stores only stocking Blu-ray hardware and titles. Sony, which is having a much tougher battle with HD DVD overseas, especially in the US, is playing up its Australian report for all its worth. “This report quite clearly depicts the current state of play in the High Definition format market in Australian homes,” said Carl Rose, Managing Director of Sony Australia. “Across the key areas of high definition entertainment, from hardware to content, these figures show that Blu-ray is distinctly the format of choice for consumers. Coming into Christmas we can only predict that adoption will continue to increase thanks to the backing of the format by the greatest number of electronics hardware manufacturers and movie and game development studios.” Sony freely admits that the PS3, with more than 100,000 consoles sold in Australia, has been the key component behind driving sales of Blu-ray movies and games. The Blu-ray player market has been a bright spot for Sony in an otherwise desolate year in which the PS3 has suffered a humiliating route at the hands of Nintendo's Wii and has also been outsold by Microsoft's Xbox 360. “The PS3 was built with a Blu-ray player at the heart of it to give users the ultimate movie and gaming experience in high definition,” said Michael Ephraim, Managing Director of Sony Computer Entertainment Australia and New Zealand. “Not only are film fans enjoying what the Blu-ray format delivers via the PS3, but gamers are seeing what the capacity of a Blu-ray Disc delivers compared with other formats. Games like Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune submerge the player in an amazingly lifelike environment thanks to so much data being able to be stored on the format. As more and more development studios embrace the Blu-ray format and explore the full capacity of the 50GB disc, PS3 owners are in for interactive entertainment experiences like they have never seen before.” “In the year to date, all 20 of the top 20 best-selling high definition movie titles have been released in Blu-ray, with 13 exclusively on the format. With the enormous support behind the format from leading film production and distribution companies, together with increasing consumer demand for Blu-ray titles, these figures show that the Blu-ray format is the future of high definition movie viewing,” said Michele Garra, Managing Director of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. It will be interesting to see whether the HD DVD camp responds with its own set of figures for the Australian market or whether it simply focus on other much larger markets in which it is doing better.
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  written by Robert Wilson, December 05, 2007
The ratio of blu-ray to HD DVD is 26:1. Since this is almost entirely the 100,000 PS3’s sold (which Sony “freely admits” to according to the article) that means there are roughly 3,800 HD DVD players sold.
Disc sales for October Blu-ray 18,000 Discs / 100,000 Players = .18 movies per system HD DVD 2,000 Discs / 3,800 Players = .53 movies per system Does this figure say anything about consumer’s support for the format or buying power? Is just the October time frame significant, and if not why is it in the article? Lastly is some perspective. According to Wikipedia there have been 5.59 million Playstation 3 s sold worldwide. Since every PS3 plays Blu-ray movies that would mean 5.59 million Blu-ray machines roughly 200,000 stand alone players = 5.79 million Blu-ray players worldwide. When Wal mart sold HD DVD players for $99 they sold 100,000 in a weekend. Total HD DVD player sales are around 750,000. So when I read this story, 3,800 HD DVD players compared to 750,000 total and 100,000 sold in two days what is the significance? Or better yet 100,000 PS3’s compared to 5,590,000 total. Why is Australia all of a sudden a metric for electronics and high def sales? If it is, the PS3 seems to be selling very poorly there and maybe that should be a news story as well. This whole thing is crazy. Take it with a grain of salt please. written by Stan Beer, December 06, 2007
You sound a bit defensive Robert. If you read the story, I make it clear from the outset that this was a Sony commissioned study and that Australia is a small market. I also mention that Blu-ray and HD DVD are having a much tougher battle overseas - especially in the US. Australia is used as a metric in many studies actually because it happens to be a consumer population that is often similar adoption rates and tastes to other western markets, although this is not always the case.
written by numbskull, December 06, 2007
Stan - if anything, Australia tends to show a faster takeup of consumer technologies than other western nations.
Robert - the significance of October is most likely that it's the most recent period for which figures are available. And I suspect the low attach rate for Blu-ray indicates that few people (OK, few Australians) are using their PS3 as a player. Tell us what you think! better to paste your comment - this page will refresh every 15 minutes
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Hilariously they are also trying to include PC drives in player stats which is pretty pathetic. Its a fact that people are buying the PS3 to use as a BluRay player because in many places its the cheapest player on the market. On the other hand I have yet to hear of anyone who has bought a laptop with a HD-DVD drive for the purpose of plugging into a TV and watching films on it.