May 15, 2008
Blu-ray: Waiting to Take Off
Blu-ray disc (BD) would have won the format war over rival storage standard HD DVD. But it’s still facing a formidable challenge from the traditional CD/DVD products. Technology market researcher IDC informs that despite the ramp of Blu-ray drives, DVD burners will continue to be the leading volume product until 2012.

However, as the PC market’s adoption of DVD burners becomes saturated and increasingly commoditized, Blu-ray adoption will accelerate in 2009 and Blu-ray drives will become the majority of the total market value in 2012.

“DVD burners will remain the bread-and-butter business for ODD (optical disc drive) vendors,” said Wolfgang Schlichting, research director, Removable Storage at IDC. “Despite Blu-ray’s win over HD-DVD in the format war, Blu-ray drive adoption will be limited in 2008 because of their high price and only moderate consumer interest.”

Over 100 million Blu-ray drives will ship worldwide in 2011, IDC forecasts.