Port Washington (NY) - Earlier this month, standalone Blu-ray players counted for 90% of the next-gen DVD hardware market, but analyst firm NPD says that consumers shouldn't read too much into that.
For the week ending January 12, Blu-ray players outsold HD DVD players by a margin of 9-to-1. That was just including standalone players, meaning the Playstation 3 is not skewing the results. The Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on was also not included.
However, "One week doesn't really mean a lot," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for NPD. That week in particular, there were numerous promotions for free Blu-ray players with the purchase of an HDTV. Big box retailers also discounted some players that week to their lowest advertised price to date.
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"With promotions, it's very easy to manipulate a week's worth of sales," said Baker. "We cannot make judgments based on one week's worth of data."
When excluding the PS3 and Xbox 360 add-on, HD DVD player sales have typically outperformed Blu-ray, largely because of HD DVD's price advantage. However, Blu-ray Disc movies continue to outsell HD DVD titles by margins of 2-to-1 or greater.
