Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 28 April 2008 11:54
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
A news report has quoted Samsung’s “bullish forecast” for Blu-ray
adoption and sales, but this is hardly a surprise now that it is the
only high-def optical format on the market. Still, has Blu-ray left its
run too late?
Maker of Blu-ray players and a bountiful plethora of electronic devices, Samsung, has said that it thinks the obvious: Blu-ray sales will go up.
The unsurprising news is contained within an Associated Press (AP) report
published in the Sydney Morning Herald.
That said, given that Samsung is one of the major manufacturers of Blu-ray players, you’d hardly expect Samsung to forecast that digital downloads are the future – or that HD DVD will make a surprise comeback.
The AP report quotes a Samsung press release, where Jun Dong-soo, the chief of Samsung’s AV business, says: “Our own Blu-ray product sales should increase to 400 billion won (US$402 million; euro257 million) this year and surpass 1 trillion won (US$1 billion; euro643 million) by 2010."
Samsung’s Jun thinks that 5 million Blu-ray “products” will sell this year, but that’s no surprise either when Blu-ray is the only high definition game in town – despite the availability of upscaling DVD players – but says this is a “conservative estimate”.
Jun is also quoted believing that the market will grow 80% per year until 2012 – with 51 million players sold by that time.
So, what exactly will it take for Jun’s predictions to come true? Please read onto page 2.
