DVD sales projections....
TOKYO, JAPAN, Newsbytes : A year on from its commercial launch, the DVD-Video market remains lackluster and accurate sales figures very hard to come by. DVD sales began on November 1, 1996, when Toshiba Corporation and Panasonic launched, between them, three models of DVD-Video players in Japan.
Sales of the machines followed in the United States, in March. They had been due to begin before Christmas 1996 but a lack of software titles led manufacturers to delay the launch. They were worried that a slow start to sales of the players would gain it the failure label.
Later this year, in August, sales officially began in most of Asia.
European consumers are yet to see an official launch as manufacturers
are still trying to decide on an audio system to use. US and Japanese
machines use the Dolby AC- 3 surround system but Philips wants MPEG-2
digital audio to be the European standard. It looks like it will be, but an awaited final decision means no players and no software until
something is decided.
Different stories are being told about the current DVD-Video market by
different manufacturers but one thing is for sure, the slow and
fragmented start to sales of both hardware and software means most
projections won't be fulfilled until a year or two after the
manufacturer's original plans.
A spokeswoman for Matsushita Electric told Newsbytes, "To the end of
September, our cumulative production of video players was 400,000
units." She added that some of those players were for OEM customers.
The total size of the DVD-Video market is estimated to be around one
million units this year, she said. The company estimates the player-only market to reach 80 million by 2,000 and the for DVD, including software, to become a $41.5 billion market by 2,000.
Toshiba said today that it estimated the Japanese DVD-Video player
market to be between 200,000 and 300,000 units this year. In the United States, the company predicted industry-wide sales of around 600,000 units or more, if the Christmas season was good.
In summer 1996, when it announced its first DVD-Video players, the
company said, "A surge in interest in DVD is now expected, and worldwide demand for DVD- related hardware, including ROM and RAM drives and video players, is expected to reach 120 million units in 2000. Add software and applications, and DVD is expected to yield a multi-trillion-yen market."
Today, the spokesman told Newsbytes, "To put it briefly, we slipped on
the forecast by one year, so we're now predicting that for 2001." He
said, the company anticipates the DVD-ROM and RAM markets to be worth
$16 billion, DVD- Video to be $8 billion and DVD-Audio to be $4 billion in 2001. By that time, the software market is expected to be worth $120 billion.
"The amount of software is steadily picking up. In Japan, there were 260 titles in September and we expect 500 by the end of 1997. In the United States, there are 200 now and should be 500 by the end of the year," the spokesman added.
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My read is that most of the slippage was due to the lack of release of DVD titles by the major filom companies and the threat of Divx DVD players making present DVD players obsolete.
Zenith has early exclusive distribution rights to Divx DVD sales in the US and should be introducing the first units in April, along with the sale of its first HDTV units..64" wide screen projection sets.
In the previous press release from Korea, it was noted that LGE wants to grab 25% of the digital TV market and my guess is that they are aiming for 25% of the DVD market, too. If Zenith remains the exclusive US distributor of LGE produced Divx units, this could bring another $1 billion in annual revenue to Zenith within a few years.
What makes Divx especially attractive is that it's fully compatible with all present DVD title releases and is the only player which will show selected offerings from Disney, Dreamworks (Star Wars, etc.) and a number of other large Holllywood studios whom want the added copyright and usage protection only delivered/available via the Divx players. |
