As we reported a few weeks ago, sales of standalone Blu-ray
players have been down since January. To find out why, Harris
Interactive surveyed 2,529 U.S. adults and found that only 9% owned a Blu-ray player or Playstation 3. Of the rest, only 9% planned on
buying a Blu-ray disc player within the next year.
While many people expected sales of Blu-ray disc players to spike when
Toshiba decided to drop out of the high-definition HD DVD market in February 2008, according to a new Harris Poll, it seems that the
recently resolved high definition format war is not motivating consumers to purchase the advanced DVD players any time soon. The Harris
Poll of 2,529 U.S. adults surveyed online between April 7 and 15, 2008 by Harris Interactive found that:
Ownership of
standard DVD players is practically ubiquitous (87%);
Few report owning Blu-ray disc players (4%), Sony PlayStation 3 (5%),
HD DVD players (6%) and the HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360 (1% have external drive while 9% have an Xbox 360);
Only
nine percent of non-Blu-ray player owners report being likely to purchase a Blu-ray disc player within the next year, even when
made fully aware that Blu-ray is considered to be the definitive technology for high definition DVD players going forward;
Two-thirds of consumers are familiar with the recently resolved high-definition format war (67%) and seven in ten of them
have heard that Blu-ray is the unofficial winner (69%);
Nearly a quarter (23%) of those aware of the format war
report that they had been waiting for the rivalry to play itself out before purchasing a high definition player, but by April
they had yet to do so;
While research groups can forecast all they want, surveys like this show that its
going to be some time before Blu-ray replaces the DVD. If you'd like to read more, Harris Interactive entire press release can be found
here.
