ABI: Consumers Holding Off on Blu-ray Purchases

NEW YORK, August 1: ABI
Research has concluded that there is “widespread reluctance” on the part of
consumers to purchase a Blu-ray DVD player in the near future.

The research firm surveyed
1,000 respondents and found that more than half said they had no plans to
purchase one, while just 23 percent indicated an intent to buy in 2009.

Steve Wilson, a principal
analyst at ABI Research, noted that this reluctance stems from a lack of
consumer awareness about the benefits of Blu-ray. “Consumers were happy to
embrace standard DVD when that format arrived because the improvement in
quality over VHS videotapes was dramatic. Standard DVD didn’t require the
purchase of a new TV either. In contrast, while half of the respondents to our
survey rated Blu-ray’s quality as ‘much better’ than standard DVD, another 40
percent termed it only ‘somewhat better,’ and most are very satisfied with the
performance of their current DVD players.”

Pricing and the need to
also buy an HD TV set are also obstacles to the format reaching critical mass,
Wilson said. “We expect that player prices will remain above $300 for Tier One
models for the remainder of this year.”

However, the Blu-ray
market is continuing to progress thanks to Sony’s PlayStation 3 console. “While
you might think gamers purchase fewer movie discs than others, we didn’t see
any significant evidence of that in our results. PS3 console shipments will go
a long way to help bring down manufacturing costs and drive down Blu-ray player
prices.”

—By Mansha Daswani