Sony Electronic's President Touts Blu-ray

[Blu Titan]

A very nice article from Twice.com. I will psot the two sections that deal directly with Blu-ray.

Glasgow Touts Sony’s Share Gains, Blu-ray, Green Efforts
By Steve Smith -- TWICE, 3/5/2008 9:49:00 AM

New York — Sony Electronics’ semiannual press roundtable with president Stan Glasgow took a colorful turn, as the company discussed Blu-ray, its green recycling efforts and the successful ad campaign featuring those colorful “HDNA molecules,” among other topics.


Glasgow and Stew Redsun, corporate marketing senior VP, reviewed the current CE marketplace and how Sony is competing in it during the briefing at the Sony Building, here. This comes shortly after Sony’s dealer show, where it previewed more audio, video and computer products, and other categories. Among the key issues discussed this morning were:




The economy and Sony: Regardless of what Warren Buffett said earlier this week about the economy being in a recession, there isn’t one in consumer electronics, according to Glasgow. “The bottom line is that consumers are buying CE products. The transition to HD is a major factor in that. We had one of our strongest holiday seasons across the board, and we gained share.”



Sony Style growth: Sony operates 40 Sony Style stores and plans to have 60 by 2010. “We had 34 percent growth in sales both online and in stores. We are working hard to improve the consumer experience,” Glasgow said. “We are also working with our retail partners,” and, he noted, Sony Style departments are now part of Nebraska Furniture Mart and Abt, among others.



Format-war aftermath: While the Blu-ray format war may be over, “the battle really begins now to move people away from DVD to Blu-ray,” Glasgow said. “We have a lot of work to do now, so we are not gloating. Upscale DVD players have gotten better and better. We need to explain the additional feature sets, PIP, BD live and other features.” He added that Sony “will build as many Blu-ray decks as we can.”



Blu-ray pricing: Blu-ray prices should hit $299 by the end of the year and probably $200 by 2009. While Glasgow won’t go into Sony’s Blu-ray market share he did estimate that there will be 5 million standalone players sold this year worldwide with 75 percent to 80 percent sold in the United States. And as for HD broadband downloads hurting Blu-ray, he added that the infrastructure isn’t yet available to make a major impact anytime soon in the United States, and “you have the issue of a movie being an overnight rental that you can’t move and don’t own. [Broadband] will happen, but it won’t derail a packaged format for a decade.”


For the entire article visit:http://www.twice.com/article/CA65384...?desc=topstory

[Argento Fan]

5 million standalones by the end of 2008 is great news. Hope to see player prices around $200 by Christmas. Maybe profile 1.0 or the new cheaper Blu-ray players will be around that range.

[SGRSBSKIER]

5 million worldwide with 3.75-4 million players in the US thats more than 6 times as many as last year (assuming 600k last year). If disc sales mirror that December will see over 10 million discs sold.

[sj001]

I can definitely see this happening, maybe even less than the prices he is quoting, especially when some of these Chinese players come to market.

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by SGRSBSKIER

5 million worldwide with 3.75-4 million players in the US thats more than 6 times as many as last year (assuming 600k last year). If disc sales mirror that December will see over 10 million discs sold.

This is a doable number. For both markets.

Pro-B