Blu-ray disc sales, by and large, are not doing well. Except in Germany, where physical disc sales grew 9.9 per cent during the first-half of this year (and in retail value terms grew 11.8 per cent) to €625 million according to data from the German BVV video association.

Germany’ s love affair with Blu-ray is helped by outlets such as Amazon-de and the retailing giants of Media Markt and Saturn, which – according to IHS Electronics & Media – have helped mark out Germany as Western Europe’s best market for Blu-ray.

Indeed, IHS says their data shows Blu-ray sales in Germany growing 50 per cent y-o-y to 14.1 million units, while consumer spending on Blu-ray grew 40.3 per cent to reach €188 million during the first half of this year.

Germany is now Europe’s Number One Blu-ray market with 11.3 million homes owning a Blu-ray player (and outpacing the UK’s 10.8m), with much of the growth occurring since 2011. IHS says that key to this German success is the ownership in German of stand-alone Blu-ray players, and not just ownership of some sort of console player.  Also influencing Blu-ray sales is Germany’s lack of PVR penetration.

Categories: Articles, Consumer Behaviour, Equipment, Equipment, Markets, Research, UHD