While sales of Blu-ray Disc packaged content has been swinging upward in the past year with the growth of HD viewers and Blu-ray player owners, it began at a time when sales of standard DVDs were tapering off and even heading downward. So even though Blu-ray sales continue on the upswing, fresh data suggests that it will not be enough to offset an overall decline in video disc sales.
Futuresource, a London-based consultancy, projects that sales of packaged media (primarily DVD and Blu-ray) will stay flat globally through 2012 or later. What growth there is in home entertainment, it said, will primarily be propelled by online downloads and mobile distribution (including mobile TV) largely via cell phones and perhaps other new devices.
Both Hollywood studios and Futuresource agree that Blu-ray title revenue likely will triple this year over 2008, as standard DVD continues to slowly wane. (Blu-ray players are backwards-compatible with standard DVD).
Concurring with some other analysts, Futuresource also thinks a big reason Blu-ray is not rising more dramatically as a preferred standard (although tripling business from year-to-year is not all that shabby) is because it doesn’t represent as noticeable a change from DVD to Blu-ray, as did VHS tape to DVD.
