For a wide range of reasons, Blu-ray looks set for some serious price cuts this Christmas.
The need for healthy holiday sales in a bear market, competitive pressure from movie download services, and media speculation about the future success of the Blu-ray format itself has resulted in falling Blu-ray Disc (BD) player prices across a range of current and older models, according to ABI Research.
Tier 2 players and older models (6-9 months) are now widely available under US$200. Amazon is offering a Samsung model bundled with four discs for that price. Holiday season prices may be in the US$150-200 range. All of this runs counter to many of the industry's original market forecasts and expectations.
"Blu-ray vendors and dealers are starting to realize that for Blu-ray to become the next DVD, they need to lower player prices in order to generate interest and build volumes," commented ABI Research principal analyst Steve Wilson.
"They are also getting more competition than they expected from download alternatives such as Xbox 360 and the Roku Netflix player, TiVo and Amazon. However downloads provide an opportunity as well as a threat – both LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics have concluded agreements with Netflix that allow some of their players to download movies and TV shows straight from Netflix. The more the Blu-ray players adopt these download capabilities, the better they will be able to differentiate themselves from standard DVD players."
Story source:
digitimes.com.
