Blu-ray Disc sales share to double by year-end

Format will account for 61% of best-selling titles by 2012

By Danny King -- Video Business, 8/19/2008

AUG. 19 | Blu-ray Disc’s share of U.S. sales of best-selling home entertainment titles will double by the end of the year as retailers are likely to drop Blu-ray player prices to as low as $250 by the holiday season, marking the start of the format’s ascendency to the predominant form of home entertainment, according to a report by U.K.-based research firm Futuresource.

As much as 12% of the sales of best-selling U.S. movie and TV titles will be Blu-ray by the end of the year, Futuresource said in the report released today. By 2012, Blu-ray will account for 61% of the DVDs sold in the U.S., where growth will exceed that of Western Europe, according to the report.

U.S. revenue from Blu-ray sales and rentals for the first half of the year was more than $200 million, representing a 300% jump from a year earlier despite overall home-entertainment spending being little changed at about $10.1 billion, according to data compiled by Video Business and Rentrak.

Such growth will accelerate during the rest of the year, as 2008 Blu-ray disc unit sales will jump fivefold from 2007, Futuresource said.

In June, Entertainment Merchants Assn. forecast that U.S. Blu-ray revenue will reach $9.5 billion by 2012.

“What has impressed me most is the way the retailers are supporting Blu-ray and how much space they are giving over to Blu-ray discs,” Futuresource managing director Jim Bottoms said in a statement. “Europe is still some way behind in this regard, but here too we are seeing more of a push behind the format.”

Indeed, France is the only Western European country where Blu-ray sales will even match those of standard-definition discs by 2012, according to the report. Blu-ray sales will account for between 39% and 46% of disc sales that year in countries such as Italy, Spain and the U.K.

Blu-ray sell-through market share in France and the U.K. will more than double next year to as much as 6%, according to Mai Hoang, lead analyst in Futuresource’s home video team.

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