Last week Richard Cooper, video analyst at Screen Digest media research, gave a presentation at Media-Tech 2008 in Frankfurt, Germany. The presentation started with a forecast on Blu-ray adoption in both Western Europe and the United States. Driven by US-declines we can expect unit sales to go down in 2008 and 2009, says Richard Cooper. By 2011 consumers will switch to Blu-ray, where the format is expected to account for one in three sales by that year.
Cooper's update shows that Blu-ray is still at its start and has a tough time reaching the consumer with such a strong competitor: DVD. Europe's largest Blu-ray market, the United Kingdom, didn't massively adopt the format in 2007 and this is not expected to happen this year either. Blu-ray's disc sales will be minimal and is expected to account for 2% of the total video disc sales in Europe.
With 2011 as the format's 'switching' year, and this year's Fall being the expected start of a price drop we are curious if Cooper is right. Adoption after possible price drops this year, or a real decline until 2011?
Update
Mr. Richard Cooper mailed us that he was misquoted in the article above. In Frankfurt mr. Cooper said he didn't expect an actual decline over 2008/2009, but that video packaged media is likely to. Cooper expects Blu-ray sales to grow substantially in 2008/2009, but not enough to compensate for the forecast decline in DVD sales over the same period.
Cooper's presentation can be found here.
