Blu-ray Disc sales were up 84% in the first half of the year and a whopping 112% in the second quarter, compared to the same periods last year, according to DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group.
Despite another overall decline of 3.3% in consumer spending on home entertainment (DVD, Blu-ray Disc, digital distribution) to $8.8 billion in the first six months, sales and rentals of Blu-ray Disc reached a combined total of $982 million for the first half of the year, with Blu-ray Disc sales accounting for $733 million in the period, and $363 million in the second quarter alone.
Blu-ray Disc hardware sales also continued to climb by 103% in the first half of the year, selling almost 2 million set-top units to bring the total installed base of Blu-ray Disc players in the U.S. to 19.4 million units.
Shipments of Blu-ray discs to retail were also way up in the first half of 2010 to 77 million, a 98% increase from last year, according to figures compiled by Swicker & Associates on behalf of the DEG. Household penetration of all Blu-ray Disc compatible devices, including set-top players, PC drives and PlayStation 3 consoles, has now reached 19.4 million U.S. homes.
“The growth of Blu-ray, both hardware and software, continued to dominate the home entertainment landscape in the first half,” said Ron Sanders, President, DEG and President, Warner Home Video.
In related HiDef data, 79 million HDTVs have sold to consumers, with some 8.5 million HDTVs selling in the first half of the year to put U.S. household penetration at approximately 51.32 million, according to figures compiled by the DEG based on data from CEA, retailers and manufacturers.
Overall, packaged media sales dropped an alarming 7.1% in the first half of the year, and that is compared to a fairly poor showing last year as well. But the decline was not as steep in the second quarter, when packaged media sales were down 3%.
“Clearly, we are still grappling with a challenging marketplace and a tough economy, but overall the trends that we are seeing are encouraging,” Sanders said.
Overall consumer spending on home entertainment also looked brighter in the second quarter when it was nearly flat at -0.7%.
Also encouraging, consumer transactions for home entertainment products were up 2.3% for the first half of the year.
Digital distribution continued a steady rise with electronic sales up 36.9% to $285 million and video-on-demand (VOD) up 19.1% to $865 million in the first half of the year, a combined growth of 23.1% to $1.1 billion. This marks the first time that digital distribution surpassed the $1 billion mark in the first six months of the year.
Overall rental spending was down 4.9% to less than $3 billion in the first half of 2010, according to Rentrak Corporation’s Home Video Essentials, although kiosk revenue was up 55%.
It’s not surprising that DVD sales and rentals are down as the market has clearly achieved an astounding maturity level with 284 million DVD players, including set-top and portable DVD players, Home-Theater-in-a-Box systems, TV/DVD and DVD/VCR combination players, having been sold since the format was introduced in 1997. There are now about 91 million DVD households and the DEG estimates that some 68% of DVD owners have more than one player.
Nonetheless, another 8.7 million DVD players were sold to U.S. consumers in the first half of 2010, according to figures compiled by the DEG based on data from CEA, retailers and manufacturers.
The DEG compiles quarterly sales data for various products within the home entertainment category, including Blu-ray, DVD and HDTV. The industry association compiles its data based on input from member companies, retailers and industry association tracking sources.
— by Scott Hettrick