Rich Fiscus
29 Jan 2008 22:23
After the dissapointment of being outsold by Blu-ray players more than 10:1 a week earlier, HD DVD standalone player sales rebounded for the week ending January 19, 2008 to comprise around 1/3 of all Next-Gen DVD players sold.
Ross Rubin, analyst for the NPD Group attributes both Blu-ray's recent advantage and HD DVD's apparent resurgence to price rather than any consumer mandate. “Both camps face really strong competition from standard DVD up-converting models, which inexpensively render [consumers’] massive DVD libraries well on their TVs,” said Rubin, adding “We’ve seen a consistent trend of the market responding to changes in price and promotion by both camps. So you’ll see a significant shift [in sales one way or the other] in response to the end of a promotion or the beginning of a new promotion.”
Toshiba, however, is putting a more positive face on the development. Toshiba marketing VP Jodi Sally argues that the previous week's figures were the result of a gap betwen promotions, with one ending on Janury 5, and the next beginning on the 13th. “All of our promotions had ended at that time,” he said . “But if you look at our unit sales at key retailers for the first week of our price moves, Toshiba sales are twice the rate of our average weekly sales during 2007.”