Overall DVD sales have been declining over the past couple of years, but the format's expected successor, Blu-ray, also hasn't done very well in this turbulent economy.
Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif-Coheh believes the home movie market can get a large assistance boost from online downloads and the Blu-ray format, and the home video industry could see modest growth in 2011.
Triple digit growth could be possible in 2009, as another analyst firm, Glopbal Media Intelligence, predicted up to 300 percent growth of the Blu-ray format in 2009. Althoughthat's "slightly aggressive," Reif-Cohen noted, it could still drastically increase over the next nine months.
Blu-ray currently controls just four percent of the home video market, but assuming the price of Blu-ray continues to drop, I think it can control as much as 10 percent of the market by the first quarter of 2010. To reach this goal, however, the price of both Blu-ray movies and standalone players need to drop further, as more manufacturers continue to roll out new players.
Not only are there new players being released at a more frequent rate, but they also are noticeably cheaper than older Blu-ray models.
I'm curious to see how much further, if at all, the video market deteriorates the rest of 2009 -- the economy may be disappointing, but it's obvious people still want to be entertained by watching movies and content.
What price point does Blu-ray need to reach before you purchase a player, if you haven't already?
