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Consumer reception for high definition Blu-Ray players is lukewarm, according to market analyst ABI.
In a consumer survey, over half of the 1000 respondents said they had no plans to purchase one, citing “other priorities”, while a further 23 per cent said they were likely to buy, but not until 2009.
The high prices of Blu-Ray players constituted a major barrier for sales, as well as the accompanying need to buy a new HD television. The combination of these two factors has left many consumers questioning the value of such a product.
“Consumers were happy to embrace standard DVD when that format arrived because the improvement in quality over VHS was dramatic. Standard DVD didn’t require the purchase of a new TV either,” said Steve Wilson, principal analyst at ABI.
However, the Blu-Ray enabled Playstation 3 has seen increasing popularity in the games console market and so the numbers of installed Blu-Ray players continues to climb – ensuring an ongoing market for Blu-Ray discs.
“While you might think gamers purchase fewer movie discs than others, we didn’t see any significant evidence of that in our results,” added Wilson. “PS3 console shipments will go a long way to help bring down manufacturing costs and drive down Blu-Ray player prices.”
Link: Business Wire
