DVD expected to conquer Europe
news.com
By Reuters
Special to CNET News.com
August 28, 1999, 8:30 p.m. PT
BERLIN--Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), the video format that has taken the United States by storm, is poised to burst into European homes over the next year, companies and analysts at the consumer electronics industry's biggest fair said today.
Manufacturers at the IFA fair in the German capital said they see Europe as the next breakthrough market for the format and expect a boom over the holiday season in sales of DVD movies and their players, which offer superior picture and sound quality to standard video cassettes.
"When you look at the American market and the speed of its development, then you can see the direction Europe is now headed," Birgit Traufetter, publisher of German trade periodical DVD Magazin, told Reuters.
"Compared even to the growth of the video recorder and the compact disc player after their starts, DVD has been phenomenal," she said.
Along with higher quality, the silver platters offer far more storage space than a video cassette, allowing manufacturers to package music videos, interviews with stars, a copy of the film script, and uncut scenes along with the movie.
The industry is gearing up to use the technology for games and computer programs as well.
Figures provided by DVD Magazin show sales of DVD players have soared since their launch in the United States in 1997 to about 2.1 million players worldwide today and are expected to top 4 million by the end of 1999.
In comparison, video recorders took five years to produce unit sales of 2.2 million, while compact disc players sold 1.4 million units in their first five years on the market.
The number of players across continental Western Europe is expected to hit 1 million by Christmas, Dutch electronics company Philips said.
"This is clearly the breakthrough year for the market in Europe," Philips Consumer Electronics CDO Adri Baan told a news conference. "We believe DVD will become the main format for pre-recorded video material."
Philips said it would expand a joint marketing campaign with Warner Home Video this year to focus on Western Europe, including an advertising and promotions blitz for Warner's software and the Dutch company's hardware.
Japan's Sony also heralded DVD as the next great hope in the home entertainment market, which has slowed since the mid-1990s.
"Growth in DVD is one of the main areas that is driving our business," Sony Germany Marketing Director Leo Bonengl told Reuters. "We have just posted our highest market share ever for consumer electronics in Germany and DVD was a part of that."
The fact that almost no DVD players can record from television, and none in digital quality, means the VCR will exist alongside DVD for years to come, said Christof Wesp, product manager of the German unit of Warner Home Video.
Players in Germany, Europe's largest market for DVD, cost between $530-$1,070.
Among the thousands of consumers who flocked to the DVD display area at the IFA today, the first day the fair was open to the public, most agreed that the DVD would not yet push the VCR out from under their televisions sets.
"The picture is clearly better than from video cassettes," said Alfons Maas. "But I don't think I'd buy one myself until the price went down and I was sure I could get most of the videos I get now on cassette in this new format.''
Held every two years, IFA has drawn some 850 companies from 36 countries and is expected to attract 400,000 visitors.
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