Economic Crisis Slows Gadget Spending, Blu-ray Adoption
The economic crisis may spell trouble for Blu-ray and the next generation of HD media. The uncertainty in the markets has consumers scaling back their purchase plans for the holiday season, and big ticket tech items are suffering the biggest hits.
Consumer Electronics Association (CEA, the organization behind CES) is predicting an increase of 3.5-percent in spending on gadgets in the fourth quarter of the year, only half of the increase seen in 2007. On the whole, the CEA found that consumers expect to shrink their holiday budgets by 14-percent from last year.
In particular, some industry analysts expect Blu-ray to suffer the brunt of this cutback, especially because players and media are still expensive enough to keep Blu-ray from reaching commodity status. Plus, many consumers still have yet to embrace HDTV -- although high-def displays are becoming more common, they're still far from ubiquitous.
This could provide an opportunity for other media to swoop in and steal Blu-ray's thunder. High definition video on demand is becoming a more common offering from cable TV providers, and services like iTunes, Amazon, and Hulu are drawing in more and more viewers everyday. If some of these video over Internet offerings can figure out an easier way to get video to consumer television sets, Blu-ray may see its chances for market domination start to fade into the ether. [From: NY Times and SF Chronicle]
