Some Japanese news topics from IT Media

[Rio]

Matsushita's strategy of Blu-ray, interview with Mr. Kazuhiro Tsuga, exective officer of Matsushita

- BD recorder DMR-BW200 was selling very well, sold 20,000 within less than 2 months, 10,000 per month (initial plan was 6,000 units per month)
- BD playback equipment shared 96% of HD playback equipment in Japan (96% BD, 4% HD DVD)
- There was actually no "format war" in Japan
- We've been said that Panasonic's player release was late and being expensive, so this year we'll release high cost valued product as soon as possible.


Toshiba's claim, interview with Mr. Uchiyama, VP of Toshiba America

- The ratio of A1 to XA1 sold was 1:9
- 70,000 players shipped in last year (including G1 and G2), 60,000+ players sold. About half of this number was G2 player
- 18 Wheeler HD DVD experience event seems having good effect
- "Attach rate" (28 titles per player) was given by Warner, calculated by dividing the number of HD DVD titles sold by shipped player in North America, not counting Xbox360 add-ons
- 1.8M sales projection in 2007 is basically coming from the penetration rate for households of HDTV. HDTV users will be 55M households in 2007, if 5% of those will purchase HD player, the demand will be 3M. Considering price advantage, we could take 1.8M of this
- 1.8M projection is purely for Toshiba players only, others will share the rest 1.2M with cheap Chinese HD DVD players and BD players.
- LG was a pro BD company, so LG's player is welcome for Toshiba as a promoter of HD DVD
- There is enough possibility of changing the situation of studio support. Studios always watch the numbers of hardware and software, and software business is doing business based on hardware sales, so we believe pro BD studios would support HD DVD by watching the market share
- (In replying to the question that Nelsen's data showed the number sold of BD titles surpassed HD DVD by the week of 12/24) We heard the information that PS3 bundled coupons of BD titles. The sales did not surpass in the same condition. There are various information about sales, we still have an advantage, for example, by seeing Amazon's sales data
- It is said that BD has an advantage because of PS3, while there is complaint why consumers have to pay the cost of expensive BD drive for gaming. Considering many complaints about BD drive inclusion, we don't think there are many peoples who watch movies on PS3.