July 03, 2009

New figures on the home entertainment market released by the British Video Association using data from the Official Charts Company reveal that Blu-ray Disc sales continue to rise despite the recession biting the sector as a whole in the first half of the year.

More than 3.1 million Blu-ray Discs have sold in 2009 to date, a rise of 231 per cent on the same period last year.

With consumers upgrading to Blu-ray this has led to a fall in the numbers of DVD purchased. Sales are down 9.5 per cent year-on-year bringing the total number of discs sold in 2009 to 100 million.

The outlook for the second half of the year is more promising. The BVA's 2009 Yearbook shows that 30% of all sales take place in the last two months of the year and some of this year's big pre-Christmas releases including Bruno (Universal Pictures), Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (Warner Home Video), Ice Age 3 (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment), Terminator: Salvation (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment), Tinker Bell (Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Paramount Home Entertainment) are expected to perform extremely well on DVD and Blu-ray.

The BVA also points to industry research conducted at the end of last year by TNS, indicating that 72% of consumers felt that they would have significantly less disposable income in 2009, with 31% strongly agreeing. Most respondents (98%) said they would be actively seeking out promotions and offer.

Read the entire briefing on CDRInfo.com: Blu-ray Defies Recession to Lead the Home Entertainment Market at Half Year Mark

Consumer electronics market looks up - but low prices prevent true recovery

Jul 08, 2009

Although the global consumer electronics market returned to sequential revenue growth in the second quarter, the industry this year will not achieve an annual expansion that would signal a true recovery, according to iSuppli Corp.

Global consumer-electronics equipment revenue rose to $71.1 billion in the second quarter, up 4.2 percent from $68.3 billion in the first quarter, based on a preliminary estimate from iSuppli. This represents a major improvement from the first quarter, when revenue fell by 25.8 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2008. While consumer-electronics revenue typically declines on a sequential basis in the first quarter following the fourth-quarter holiday selling season, this represented a particularly sharp decline.

"Following the dismal first quarter, conditions are starting to improve in the consumer electronics business," said Sheri Greenspan, senior analyst, consumer electronics, for iSuppli. "Revenue will continue increasing on a sequential basis in the third and fourth quarters, rising by 12.5 percent and 10.2 percent. While this growth is encouraging, 2009 will still be a down year for the industry."

iSuppli predicts global consumer electronics equipment revenue will decline to $307.6 billion in 2009, down 8.2 percent from $335.2 billion in 2008, due to the impact of the worldwide economic downturn as well as sharply declining prices for key products.

These factors caused revenue to decline by 10 percent in the first quarter compared to the same period in 2008 and by 11.3 percent in the second quarter. Revenue will decline by 8 percent and 4.2 percent in the third and fourth quarters, respectively, on an annual basis.

Read more of Consumer electronics market looks up - but low prices prevent true recoveryat EMSNOW.com