About 100 million Blu-ray players should be in homes around the world, according to a research report released by Strategy Analytics. The company reports that despite the slower than expected growth of the Blu-ray player market about 27% of North American consumers should have a Blu-ray player in their home. Worldwide the number is pretty much disappointing, only 5% of the consumers worldwide have a Blu-ray player. The slower growth and disappointing number of Blu-ray players shipped worldwide is mainly caused by the increase of popularity of content streaming.
Fortunately for us, optical storage fanatics, not everywhere in the world there are stable and fast internet connections, and it's there where the demand of Blu-ray players is still growing. Also the adoption of Ultra HD (4K) should make Blu-ray players more popular as the high bandwidth required to stream movies in that format will not be available in many regions around the world.
According to the VP and Principal Analyst of Stategy Analytics, David Mercer is Blu-ray the forgotten technology of the digital age but could play a key role in delivering smart TV services and apps. As Mercer says. 'Blu-ray was one of the first mass market consumer platforms to support internet-delivered video services. Blu-ray vendors could do a better job of emphasizing these benefits alongside the obvious superiority of the Blu-ray format in delivering 1080p video quality.'
Of course also the integration of a Blu-ray player in the Playstation 3 has contributed to the growth. Do you own a Blu-ray player and do you regularly use it?
