Blu-Ray Technology Not Gaining Traction in PC Market

Blu-ray is a new media format that is on the way replacing existing DVD especially when dealing with HD (High Definition) multimedia storage and playback, and it’s sole standard available after beating HD-DVD in format war. Although some of us may have already started to order one for digital home, but apparently the popularity is still very low in today’s PC and consumer market. According to recent iSuppli’s forecast report, the Blu-ray drive may only able to penetrate around 3.9 percent into existing PC market by this year, and not more than 16.3 percent of total PC market even in 2013, which is another four years down the road.

One of the major factors that prevent the migration from conventional DVD to Blu-ray drive is due to its higher selling price. Generally, both Blu-ray drives and disc are still being retailed at higher price as compared to conventional DVD drive and disc, making them less affordable by average public users. Besides, unpopularity of Blu-ray movies with less title selection also directly impact the consumer decision when planning to upgrade to Blu-ray player. Other reasons include the market change in notebook form factor (such as netbook in compact size that have no space for blu-ray module) as well as common method to get HD media contents download directly from web that slow down the momentum to change.

This is especially true in PC market where not everyone of us treat the PC as a multimedia system but in consumer electronics market, likelihood to see the migration could be more significant since entertainment system in digital home is always demanding for full high definition media files playback on huge LCD TV screen.