Close to one in ten homes across Europe will be Blu-ray enabled by the end of this year, according to a report issued today by Futuresource.
With falling prices, increased retail promotion and growing awareness all helping to drive Blu-ray Disc demand across the continent, the report predicts that this figure will continue to rise. It is expected that over 20% of European homes will be BD enabled by the end of 2011.
In line with this growth, sales of BD movie titles are expected to top 31m by the end of 2009 – a more than three-fold increase on the 9m sales recorded in 2008.
The report also highlights that despite 47% of homes throughout Europe having high-definition resolution screens, only 6% are currently receiving HD quality broadcasts.
Commenting on the report, Niels Leibbrandt, chairman of the BDA EU promotion committee said; We’re starting to see a seismic shift in uptake of BD, as people become more aware of the benefits of the format. The gap between those homes with high-definition screens and those currently receiving high-definition broadcast quality represents a fantastic opportunity for BD. If people want the image and sound quality of HD now, with no ongoing monthly investment, then a BD player is the best way to immediately bridge this gap.
Futuresource also highlights that the Christmas sales period will continue to be important, with close to 50% of this year’s annual shipment of BD players expected in the final quarter of the year.
This is the first report of the Futuresource Blu-ray tracker prepared for the Blu-ray Disc Association. It will be issued every quarter over the next 12 months and you will hear about it here first on the official BD European blog.
Niels will be revealing more information and commentary on these findings at IFA 2009. To learn more check out our IFA 2009 page.
You may have noticed an earlier version of this post which had a different figure for the number of BD-enabled homes. This was due to an error in calculating responses and has now been corrected.
