Sony claims Blu-ray has over 95% of Australian HD market

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 05 December 2007 09:15

Opinion and Analysis

A Sony commissioned report released today claims the Blu-ray disc format had a 95.2% market share for home entertainment hardware and software in October 2007 while the HD-DVD format held just the remaining 4.8% share.

The results are part of a new study released today by GfK Marketing Services in association with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Australia. The Next Generation Tracker claims to report on total sales of Blu-ray hardware and software compared to total hardware and software sales in the HD-DVD format.

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.