According to Asia Pacific VP Tim Meade for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE), market reports in the US show that the worldwide sales ratio of Blu-ray movies to DVDs will reach an estimated 40:60 in 2010. Furthermore he says this indicates sales volume of Blu-ray movies may surpass DVD by 2011.
Meade is basing this on rise of Blu-ray’s market share among all formats from 9% at the end of 2007 to 25% by the end of this year. Meade noted the sales volume of Blu-ray players in the US and Europe increased on year by four times and six times respectively, during the first half of 2008.
It’s great to see Blu-ray’s market share increase so drastically in such a short period of time. Looks like Sony’s marketing strategies are working nicely.
This new Sony Vaio ad, created by 180 in Los Angeles, shows an HDTV open up swallow a Blu-ray player. It’s meant to show the Sony Vaio as a combination of an HDTV and Blu-ray player. Either way it’s a pretty awesome clip, enjoy.
The first quarter of Sony’s fiscal year shows a profit in its games division with strong sales of the PS3 leading the way. Sony’s game unit helped the company with $51 million in operating income. 1.56 million PS3s were sold worldwide this quarter, good for an increase of 860,000 units over last years first quarter. Overall however, Sony Corp posted a decrease in earnings over last years fiscal first quarter. Severe film declines brought a 47.4% drop in income, good for $330 million in net income.
It’s good to see strong PS3 sales keeping Sony’s game unit profits up. This can only mean that Sony will continue its effort to keep Blu-ray in its forefront, in much the same way they did to win the format war.
In a recent article by Forbes, details are given on the moves that Sony took to ensure they’d win the format war. Among the things that triggered ’sheer and utter panic’ for Sony, was the announcement last August that Paramount was choosing HD-DVD over Blu-ray. The $150 million deal that Toshiba struck along with $99 HD-DVD players they began to offer motivated all division of Sony to begin working together. Looking to push sales Sony offered to help pay for Best Buy ads in Sunday newspapers nationwide as well as pay for Blu-ray store displays. Among the things Sony did, that we know about, was drop the price of the PS3 and offer free Blu-ray movies with the PS3.
Looks like Toshiba really had Sony scrambling to stay ahead. Interestingly, it seems like Toshiba’s deal with Paramount is what caused Sony to react and do enough to eventually win the format war.
Read the full article by following the link below.
[Forbes] via [EngadgetHD]
Amazon is offering a good way to begin your Blu-ray collection with their latest deal. If you’re looking to jump into Blu, Amazon will give you eight Blu-ray movies for $80 with the purchase of a 40GB Playstation 3 ($399) or Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray player ($379). The eight titles are Black Hawk Down, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Dogma, A Few Good Men, Gattaca, Life of Brian - Collector’s Edition, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, and The Fifth Element. This makes for a great deal with each movie costing only $10.
Sony Corporation is looking to secure the leading position in the Blu-ray market with a share of 40% or more according to President Ryoji Chubachi. In a recent interview, Chubachi stated, “We definitely want to take the leading position” in the global Blu-ray market.”
With the Blu-ray competition expected to become stiffer, Sony plans on accomplishing this by boosting production of Blu-ray players and recorders. This will triple its combined shipments in business 2008 through March 2009 over the previous year to around 7 million units.
Looks like Sony is not only looking to make its technology stay around this time, but it wants the largest piece of the pie as well and understandably so.
In a few short weeks, we’ve seen the Blu-ray format gaining momentum and Sony is responding to the increasing demand. Sony Corp. is investing $113 million to expand the 1 million-square-foot Blu-ray disc manufacturing Terre Haute, Indiana plant and will create 85 new jobs. Mastering, replication, packaging, and distribution areas of the facility will all be expanded. Sony inked the deal with Indiana Secretary of Commerce Nathan Feltman at a five-day Japanese trade mission.
Dieter Daum, Executive Chairman of Sony DADC Global stated, “The rapid adoption of the new Blu-ray Disc format by consumers allows us to quickly expand Blu-ray Disc capacity in the United States. Based on the past experience with manufacturing in Terre Haute, the selection of this facility for the expansion was logical.”
The Terre Haute plant facility produces 425,000 Blu-ray discs per day, in addition to DVDs, CDs, and UMDs. By October, Sony’s three facilities combined (Terre Haute, Austria, and Japan) will have more than doubled its Blu-ray disc output from 21 to 47 million discs per month.
If you’re looking to be a proud owner of the standard, non-gunmetal, 80GB Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle then your best bet is to by your computer when it goes on sale later today on Amazon.com at 10am PST. This bundle will cost $499 and includes the 80GB PS3 system, a regular copy of Metal Gear Solid 4, and a DualShock 3 controller. According to Amazon, “demand for this item is so great, we anticipate selling out very quickly.” The system will be available in stores June 12th but they are expected to sell out quickly.
