Sony Trumpets Blu-Ray’s Lead as Toshiba Cries Foul
Sony Trumpets Blu-Ray’s Lead as Toshiba Cries Foul
December 7, 2007: With the silly season upon us, image is everything and Sony has left no doubt about the importance they place on the image of their Blu-Ray format, with two rapid-fire announcements claiming virtual domination of the Australian market.
A Sony commission report has revealed that 95.2% of the high definition market in Australia is held by Blu-Ray to HD DvD’s rather minor 4.8% share. The report was carried out by research firm GfK and focused specifically on the month of October to generate the results.
"This report quite clearly depicts the current state of play in the High Definition format market in Australian homes," said Carl Rose, Managing Director of Sony Australia.
Toshiba weren’t quite so glowing in their reaction and released a statement that referred to the report as being “commissioned specifically by Sony and contains information based on the month of October. We have access to other GfK reports showing software percentages on a YTD basis with Blu-ray at 86% and HD DVD at 14%.”
It’s not uncommon for two opposing sides to herald different statistics as being the ones the public should focus on, it’s never come at such an important time. With Christmas less then three weeks away and the season being bringing with it a consumer spending frenzy a sales victory here could lay the groundwork for further triumph leading into the New Year.
These market insights follow on from other headaches for Toshiba this week, who’ve had to deal with the crushing blow of movie rental giants, Blockbuster and Video-Ezy who both agreed to stock Blu-Ray titles exclusively.
"We are extending the portfolio of Blu-ray titles we will offer our rental customers purchasing only this HD format for the foreseeable future following the lead from the US," said John McKay, Head of Product for Blockbuster in Australia.
The Australian variations of Video-Ezy and Blockbuster are actually owned by the same company, Franchise Entertainment Group so the decision for both stores coming at the same time is no surprise.
"We endeavour to sell to demand – at this stage Blu-ray is clearly the leading HD format and industry data backs that up. The future will depend on hardware sales catering to either format and we will move with those.” said Richard Clutsom, General Manager, Buying at Video Ezy.
Despite this Toshiba is still purring about its high definition format, pointing to recent announcements by retailer JB Hifi to stock HD DvD titles and the strength of player sales for personal computers.
“To measure true hardware sales you must include all PCs that have next generation DVD, both Blu-ray and HD DVD. In PCs specifically, Toshiba and other manufacturers, including HP, Acer etc. provide the ultimate mobile HD entertainment environment and have shipped more units than PS3 in the last 6 months.” said Toshiba in a statement.
Sony is naturally quite happy with the current status quo which is vastly in their favour, whether you agree with their market share being closer to 86% or 95.2%. The Japan based company is touting the strength of their movie offerings as being a major trump card in the fight, though whether this will pan out over Christmas is yet to be proven.
"In the year to date, all 20 of the top 20 best-selling high definition movie titles have been released in Blu-ray, with 13 exclusively on the format. With the enormous support behind the format from leading film production and distribution companies, together with increasing consumer demand for Blu-ray titles, these figures show that the Blu-ray format is the future of high definition movie viewing," said Michele Garra, Managing Director of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.