International Blu-ray sales - 2009 Blu-ray sales in France cover DVD sales attrition

[Kosty]

Its a start.

Blu-ray in France is covering for DVDs attrition this year. Thats interesting as the general consensus is that Blu-ray adoption is lagging in Europe compared to North America, so thats a good sign for international Blu-ray sales.

France: BD Revenues Double, Offset DVD's Fall

Posted November 2, 2009 04:00 AM by Juan Calonge

According to data gathered by GFK and released by the Centre National du Cinéma (CNC), revenues from sale of Blu-ray software in France from January to September 2009 were 64.42 million euros, which represents a growth of 127.3% over the same period in 2008.

BD more than made up for the loss in DVD – overall revenue from physical video supports was up 1.6% year-on-year.

Market share for Blu-ray is now 7.5% of total packaged-media revenue. Units sold were 2.98 million, up 156.1% year-on-year.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=3633

Robo translation of original French site:

http://translate.google.com/translat...hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Blu-ray in France from January to September 2009 figures!

The NCC, National Center of Cinematography and the moving image, has released its latest barometer video made with GFK. The barometer is now the first 9 months of the year 2009 and allows us to learn more about the sales of high definition discs on the French market.

The good news is that consumer spending on video. They saw an increase of 1.6% over the first 9 months of the previous year. Support high definition ie Blu-Ray has captured 7.5% of the market with 64.42 million euros cons still 799.64 million euros for the DVD.

In the first 9 months of the year, 2.98 million high definition media have been sold. This represents sales only 3.4% of the market since 84.85 million DVDs have been sold. By cons, Blu-Ray has still experienced an increase of 156.1% year on year in terms of units sold.


The average price of a Blu-ray sold the unit falls to 24.2 € for the first nine months 2009 against € 18.44 for the average price of a DVD.

[HD Goofnut]

Negative reply from mike or Taffy in 3...2...1.

[Malanthius]

Ya it's a start. It is odd news considering adoption there is behind. Non the less positive news for BR.

[motion]

Maintenant je dois juste apprendre à parler français.

[Forge]

Originally Posted by motion

Maintenant je dois juste apprendre à parler français.

Why? I think Kosty did a good job of translating it for us. The chart is the only thing in french and that seems to be pretty self explanitory.

[comixguru]

Good news for Blu, but it is a minor point. US DVD sales are off by -16% while French DVD sales are down -2.8%.

Blu-ray is still a tiny part of the market with 3M in volume vs. 85M in DVD. By revenue it's very similar to the US, 7.5% of euros go to Blu.

We have the recipe for Blu to make up for DVD declines. DVD needs to drop by 2.8%, not 5X this amount.

[motion]

Originally Posted by Forge

Why? I think Kosty did a good job of translating it for us. The chart is the only thing in french and that seems to be pretty self explanitory.

It was tongue-in-cheek. I was joking that if I wanted to continue to enjoy Blu ray I may have to learn french if Blu ray ends up being a success in France only.

Oy Vey!

[Malanthius]

Originally Posted by motion

It was tongue-in-cheek. I was joking that if I wanted to continue to enjoy Blu ray I may have to learn french if Blu ray ends up being a success in France only.

Oy Vey!

Ahhhh I don't speak french. But with the translation now it's very funny!

[Kosty]

Originally Posted by motion

Maintenant je dois juste apprendre à parler français.

Dude, I robo translated it for you in two versions and the table is self explanatory.

[Kosty]

Originally Posted by motion

It was tongue-in-cheek. I was joking that if I wanted to continue to enjoy Blu ray I may have to learn french if Blu ray ends up being a success in France only.

Oy Vey!

Gotcha, but from what I am seeing already for the Oct sales in North America Blu-ray and DVD are now going to be far behind here.

Besides, with Blu-ray being a BILLION dollar industry already its already being beyond the point of future studio and retailer support.

[Kosty]

Originally Posted by comixguru

Good news for Blu, but it is a minor point. US DVD sales are off by -16% while French DVD sales are down -2.8%.

Blu-ray is still a tiny part of the market with 3M in volume vs. 85M in DVD. By revenue it's very similar to the US, 7.5% of euros go to Blu.

We have the recipe for Blu to make up for DVD declines. DVD needs to drop by 2.8%, not 5X this amount.

Its going to be a lot closer in North America by the end of the 4Q and a lot of DVD decline is the revenue not units for catalog titles because of lower retailer price points. New titles even for DVD are nowhere near that much down.

[comixguru]

Originally Posted by Kosty

Its going to be a lot closer in North America by the end of the 4Q and a lot of DVD decline is the revenue not units for catalog titles because of lower retailer price points. New titles even for DVD are nowhere near that much down.

Your optimism and graphs are endless, Kosty. I don't buy it, yet. I don't see what you see.

I see six quarters of declines in sell-through. VB/DEG reports show Blu-ray YoY growth slowing and no end to overall decline in physical sell through. With Blu-ray release numbers up and up, and prices down and down... growth is slowing?

Q1 2008 - 400% to 500% growth in high-def disc sales
Q2 2008 - up about 300%
Q4 2008 - year end numbers show 177% growth overall
Q1 2009 - Blu-ray up 100%
Q2 2009 - up 91%
Q3 2009 - Blu-ray sales rose 66.3%

As for new DVD releases, last Q4 Sony said new release sales were down 15%. We've seen 3 additional bad quarters and no indication that new releases have made any turn around. What we are seeing is that some titles still perform well, but overall new releases are down.

I think Q4 will be big as always, with Blu-ray certainly going up. But I don't believe it will staunch the bleeding this year, or even through most of next year.

[Kosty]

Again a lot of that DVD attrition is in low margin catalog sales because of lower retailer price points there. Thats not as important as top 20 DVD + Blu-ray sales of new releases which are higher more profitable price points, which are more important to studios and retailers.

Already the one week of Transformers 2 ROTF sales has improved the situation by a entire percentage point or two in one high volume week and we have plenty of high volume weeks left in the 4Q 2009.

[Kosty]

Part of the slowdown in percentage numbers is of course that the base comparison figures keep getting higher and its easier to get larger percentages earlier as the comparison base figures were much smaller.

[comixguru]

Originally Posted by Kosty

Again a lot of that DVD attrition is in low margin catalog sales because of lower retailer price points there. Thats not as important as top 20 DVD + Blu-ray sales of new releases which are higher more profitable price points, which are more important to studios and retailers.

Already the one week of Transformers 2 ROTF sales has improved the situation by a entire percentage point or two in one high volume week and we have plenty of high volume weeks left in the 4Q 2009.

You're reading way too much into those HMM numbers, and not looking at what the industry is saying.

You can't have it both ways. Catalogs can't be a smaller and smaller part of business in terms of dollars and be solely responsible for massive declines in revenue. If new releases dominate revenues, they would have to play a role in large slides in sell through revenue.

Transformers was big. But every Q4 has big titles. And, if you have too many big titles... it's going to crowd the market, and even potentially big titles may have troubles. This is not an easy spending economy we are in. Buy more is not beat consumers are marching to right now. We'll see soon enough. 2008 has 8 weeks left in it, more or less.