Following on from last week’s news that the Blu-ray sell-through release of The Dark Knight is fast approaching two million global sales, fresh figures coming out of Europe appear to further strengthen the appeal and positioning of Sony’s high-definition disc format.
Blu-ray on the up in Europe. Image: pitzyper/Flickr.
Specifically, an official press release offered up by the number crunchers at Futuresource and published through PRWeb points out that “sales of Blu-ray disc movies are defying the odds and bucking the credit crunch.”
The European outfit notes that UK consumers alone purchased some 462,500 Blu-ray discs in November, which equates to a massive monthly leap of 165 percent when gauged against the region’s figures for October.
And, looking beyond the increased popularity of Blu-ray discs, Futuresource has said it expects sales of Blu-ray hardware to “more than triple” during 2009, which should see consumers embracing around 2.5 million units across Europe.
Interestingly, those market predictions do not factor in the related sales of Sony’s popular PlayStation 3 videogames console and its onboard Blu-ray drive.
“Once people see the benefits of Blu-ray for themselves, they soon realise the difference it can make,” noted Jim Bottoms, managing director of Corporate Development at Futuresource. “Seeing is believing after all!”
“We fully expect Blu-ray to keep on bucking the current economic trend and continue its rapid growth over the next few months and beyond,” added Mr. Bottoms, who stressed that such growth was stimulated by “falling prices and even more bundling deals with large screen TVs.”
Another positive note put forth by Futuresource reveals that Blu-ray is establishing itself across the European territories considerably quicker than its DVD predecessor, which was launched more than a decade ago.
According to the official release, the region’s Blu-ray hardware adoption rates (which include units of the PlayStation 3) have outperformed DVD by around five times over the equivalent sales period.
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