If you've checked out the price of Blu-ray players, you've probably noticed that they've come down considerably over the last few months. According to a new report by ABI Research, the price of Blu-ray players are going to come down even more for the holiday season due to pressure from download services and speculation about the future success of the format.
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 player prices across a range of current and older models.
Tier 2 players and older models (6-9 months) are now widely available under $200. Amazon is offering a Samsung model bundled with four discs for that price. Holiday season prices may be in the $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,” comments 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 and Samsung 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.”
ABI Research’s “Consumer Video Technologies Forecasts” contains segmented market forecast data for LCD, RPTV, Direct View, plasma TV, DLP, RPTV and FPTV, DVD players, DVD recorders, HD DVD players and recorders, standalone PVRs, AV receivers, game consoles and portable game consoles, HTIB, portable audio and video players and cameras, SLRs, and camcorders.