Sony has commissioned a report to make it look like Blu-ray has pretty much won the format war in Australia, with a 95.2% market share of the Australian HD market, leaving the reaming 4.8% with HD DVD according. Going by the study released by GfK Marketing Services, Blu-ray hardware including Blu-ray players and PS3s outsold HD DVD hardware including HD DVD players and Xbox 360 HD DVD add-ons by 26 to 1. In the month of October 2007, over 18,000 Blu-ray Disc titles were sold compared to just 2,000 HD DVD titles.
Then again, unlike other countries where HD DVD launched, it had a late start in the Australian market, which meant that most stores were still stocking Blu-ray hardware and titles at the time. With the much stronger market share of Blu-ray with a big help of the PS3, Sony expects it to get a further boost this Christmas season and has already mentioned that over 100,000 PS3s have been sold so far in Australia.
At the moment, the total 20,000 HD disc sales between the formats in Australia is tiny compared to the million HD titles sold in Europe and the multi-million sold in the US, it is clear that it will be another while yet before a better comparison can be carried out. Interestingly, going by this Current.com.au article, the HD DVD Consortium revealed that the year to date software percentages from the GfK reports show Blu-ray at 86% and HD DVD at 14%. To make matters worse for Sony, in the last three weeks, the market shares of HD DVD have been at 37%, 31% and 23% respectively; much greater than Sony’s comparison from October.
