In 2008 people worldwide bought 38 million Blu-ray movies and even if this was many times more than the preceding year, the prognosis for 2009 is very optimistic. That the Blu-ray sales will go up a lot is hardly a surprise since it is yet to be fully established in many countries, but in 2009 the movie sales are expected to go beyond 100 million titles. It’s not hard to imagine which market will have the biggest impact since near 80% of all Blu-ray movies are sold in the USA while the remaining 20% will be sold in Western Europe and Japan.
Even if the DVD format still have a long time to live, analysts seem to agree that Blu-ray till see a strong growth over the coming years.
“With more than 1100 BD titles to choose from, combined with growing retail support and increased promotional activity, the rise of Blu-ray will offset rapidly declining sales of standard DVD product. By 2012, around 50% of US and 35% of Western European video disc retail sale volumes will be Blu-ray.” – Michael Boreham, Futuresource
In other words, Blu-ray has lost some momentum since fall fall of 2008 when among others Sony claimed that Blu-ray will make up 50% of the movie sales in 2011 already.
Considering the economical downtime we have today, the progress of Blu-ray is largely dependent on the pricing of the movies and players. The price of Blu-ray movies are often above $20, which is forcing many to wait with upgrading their DVD collection.
