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Lost in translation - April 7, 2008

Lots of blogs and news sites picked up on a report that appeared Monday in DigiTimes, purportedly paraphrasing Sony Electronics CEO Ryoji Chubachi telling a press conference in Taipei last week that Sony hopes to increase Blu-ray's share of the DVD market from 20% to 50% by the end of 2008. Or something like that. Here's how DigiTimes reported the news on its English-language web site:

Sony will offer Blu-ray Disc (BD) devices in a wide range of product lines and prices and aims to increase the global market share of its BD products from 20% currently to 50% by the end of 2008, according to Sony president and Electronics CEO Ryoji Chubachi at a press conference in Taipei on April 3.

DVD and BD currently account for about 80% and 20%, respectively, of global demand for movie discs, Chubachi indicated. The new BD devices to be offered by Sony include models integrating an HD LCD TV with BD recording functionality, Chubachi pointed out.

Clearly, something went awry as Chubachi's comments traveled from Japanese to Cantonese to English. Unless Media Wonk missed something, Blu-ray can't possibly account for 20% of global disc sales. Its share may be higher in Japan than in the U.S., but the U.S. is a pretty big DVD market, and Blu-ray certainly isn't anywhere near 20% in the U.S. It isn't even 2%.

Even if the demand were there, moreover, there isn't enough Blu-ray replication capacity in the world to sustain a 20% share of the market, least of all in the U.S. And the capacity isn't going to be there to sustain a 50% share by the end of 2008, either. Or even 2009. Or probably 2010.

Whatever Chubachi was saying, 50% of global disc sales by the end of 2008 wasn't it. Any other guesses?



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