January 22, 2008

Format Wars: HD DVD Crushed In Japan

As HD DVD slide into the abyss at an ever increasing pace here in the United States, the Japanese threw the high-def format right to the bottom according to sales figures from the last 3 months of 2007. A study of 2300 Japanese stores found that Blu-ray players accounted for 90% of high-def player sales in the last three months of 2007. And before you say that the only reason the number is so high is because of the Playstation 3, it's important that you know the study only looked at stand-alone players. The PS3 wasn't even included meaning HD DVD's market share in the last quarter of 2007 was well under 10% in Japan.

The top three selling players were all manufactured by Sony and accounted for 60% of total high-def player sales, while Panasonic and Sharp took 27% and 10% of sales respectively. Toshiba, the leader in HD DVD took only 4% of sales signifying that the HD DVD format doesn't have anywhere near the problems in the US as it does in Japan.

Japan Today via Gizmodo