Toshiba has made it official; HD DVD is no more. HD DVD and Blu-ray have been fighting for the HD optical media market since the beginning of 2006, but it was first at the start of 2008 that HD DVD started to really lose ground. Time Warner announced that it would become Blu-ray exclusive, and since then HD DVD sales have been down significantly, not even a severe price cut was able to remedy the matter. Last week stories stated that Toshiba would give up very soon, and so it has.
“This was a very difficult decision to make … but when we thought about the trouble we would cause to consumers and our partners, we decided it was not right for us to keep going with such a small presence,”
The above, Toshiba VP Atsutoshi Nishida said during a press conference this morning, where Toshiba announced its would end the HD DVD era before the end of the month. It will continue to support already sold HD DVD products, but in the future there will only be Blu-ray products on the store shelves.
Even if this is a great defeat, investors are considering this the right thing to do and the stock have been going up ever since. Toshiba have lost a lot of money on the HD DVD format, but 2008 will still be a good year as a lot of money that had been ear-marked for HD DVD can now be used for other things.
