Blu-ray Buyers in 2008

The one consumer electronics product about which I'm being asked the most this year is Blu-ray. Hollywood, the retailers, and of course the consumer electronics manufacturers are trying to figure out how sales are doing, particularly in this challenging economic environment. We got some clues from the industry last week that indicate that the aggressive price promotions for Blu-ray players seems to have paid some dividends.

Our own Digital Media Evolution study also offers some interesting insight. I had the chance to review the first findings from our team last night, and the data looks solid. Reported purchases of Blu-ray players (this would have been through the end of November) was north of two million units. It's really interesting to see how intended purchases for 2008 (from our Changing Consumer Electronics Purchase Process research from late 2007) have diverged in 2008. To our surprise, many consumer electronics categories did better in 2008 than the consumer intentions from last year would have indicated. Most pronounced were mobile and portable device sales, including digital cameras and mobile phones. It looks like smaller consumer electronics products are certainly out-performing the bigger-ticket items right now, and our new research indicates some interesting results about gifting intentions for these smaller items.