CES 2009: Blu-ray Disc Association Press Conference

The Blu-ray Disc Association held its annual press conference yesterday afternoon in the belly of the Venetian hotel. Previous press conferences from the BDA had featured studio executives commenting on the promise of the Blu-ray format. Now that the format war is over, the BDA instead chose to focus on Blu-ray's huge successes in 2008 and the format's prospects for continual growth.

Andy Parsons, President of the BDA as well as a VP with Pioneer, opened the conference with a series of statistics demonstrating Blu-ray's impressive sales performance. It seems, these days, that hardly a day goes by without a pundit somewhere predicting the format's imminent failure. It was the BDA's intention to illustrate just how short sighted and erroneous these reports are. By reporting hard numbers, it is now clear that Blu-ray has attained a dominant place in the consumer electronics industry. These up-to-date numbers show that since inception, in roughly two-and-a-half years on the market, Blu-ray has sold over 10.7 million players in the United States market. This number includes PS3 systems that make up approximately 65% of the players reported with standalone players making up the remaining 35%. PC drives are not included in these numbers. By contrast, DVD, widely acclaimed as the most successful consumer electronics format ever launched, had only sold 5.4 million players by the end if the format's third year on the market. Clearly, Blu-ray is heavily outpacing DVD adoption.

Andy Parsons, Paul Erickson, Richard Doherty, Tom Adams.

Perhaps more impressively, Blu-ray is now installed in over 8% of all US households. After three years on the market, DVD had found its way into slightly over 4% of US households, CD was in less than 2% and HDTV in 1% of homes during the same period. On the software front, Blu-ray had a record year. 5.6 million Blu-ray movies were sold in 2007 compared to 24.9 million in 2008. The 4th quarter was instrumental in Blu-ray's success in 2008: 2.3 million copies were sold in October, 3 million in November and a whopping 8 million copies in December alone.

Mr. Parsons turned the conference over to a series of independent industry analysts, moderated by Mike Snider of USA Today. The panel included Tom Adams, of Adams Media Research, Richard Doherty of Envisioneering as well as Paul Erikson of Displaysearch. Each had similar opinions on the future of Blu-ray. Erickson believes Blu-ray will enjoy steady growth in 2009 and that BD sales should continue to outpace DVD. Doherty's company, Envisioneering, surveys shoppers to sample product awareness. He reports that Blu-ray enjoyed wide consumer awareness during the 2008 holiday shopping season an equally impressive word of mouth. Mr. Doherty believes that Blu-ray will enjoy a 5-6 fold increase in sales in 2009. His research shows that consumers have responded positively to Blu-ray's increase in quality and interactivity over that of DVD. Finally, Mr. Adams believes that Blu-ray will overcome DVD in sales and that the format is DVD's true successor. He believes that BD sales will triple in 2009. All three panelists agree that digital downloads are not a threat to Blu-ray gaining sales dominance. Mr. Doherty cited evidence that investment in building better infrastructure for high-speed data has stalled in the wake of the current financial crisis. Blu-ray's success is almost certainly secure.

Stay Tuned! More to come from CES 2009!