Total Sales of New Discs Down, Blu-ray Up
Posted May 3, 2011 04:34 AM by Nayan Ashra
The Digital Entertainmen Group, DEG, have released their quarterly update which shows a shock decline in home video sales over Q1 2011 compared to Q1 2010. Their data shows an almost 10% downturn from $4.64 billion to $4.20 billion in total home video spending and an 18% decline in sales of discs from $2.6 billion to $2.07 billion. The latter is being blamed on the total lack of "tentpole" titles which broke the $1 billion of which there were four over the same period last year. Another factor in lower disc sales is that the Easter holiday period was much later this year than last pushing it into Q2 so sales of family titles may have been affected by this in a year on year comparison. In contrast, Q2 2011 is up 20% year on year so far and the growth may clear any losses from Q1.
Blu-ray bucks trend, keeps growing
BD software sales is one sector where the home video industry is seeing strong growth and despite all of the problems affecting the home video market as evidenced above, Blu-ray managed to post year on year growth of 10% in terms of software sales compared to the 18% downturn in total disc sell-through. 3D Blu-ray is also turning into a significant revenue stream as disc sales from the sector is expected to hit the $100m mark this year. Sales of BD hardware is also up over 13% year on year and the total installed base has hit 30m US households which means over 45% of households with HDTVs have a Blu-ray capable device as HDTV sales were also up by over 11% with household penetration hitting 64.5m.
Total home video revenue to be "up slightly" for 2011
Digital downloads and streaming, an area where massive gains are expected due to the emerging nature of the market, has shown modest growth of 10% year on year in total, with sell-through slightly higher at 11% and VoD at 9% growth. The DEG believe that total home video sales for 2011 will be flat or slightly up over last year which is a turnaround from this first quarter, the growth will be fuelled by big blockbuster titles in during the second half of the year.