Blu-ray disc sales double in a year

Blu-ray enjoying a sales boost
Blu-ray enjoying a sales boost

Blu-ray sales in Europe are looking better than ever, with new figures suggesting that the format has almost doubled in popularity in a year.

In Q1 of 2010, Blu-ray sales managed to increase by 94 per cent year on year, with 8.4 million discs sold, according to new figures released by the Digital Entertainment Group Europe.

This meant that consumers spent a cool 151.4 million Euros on the format. This is similar to what happened in 2009, where sales of Blu-ray increased by 109 per cent.

Riding the wave of success

Blu-ray has still got a long way to go to match DVD sales, however. In the same timeframe 135 million DVDs were sold, which is a slight drop of 1.7 per cent.

Money wise this equates to a massive 1.3 billion Euros.

Overall this meant that combined disc units sold was up 3.8 per cent.

Speaking about the increase, Yves Caillaud, senior vice president of Warner Home Video said: "Blu-ray has continued to ride the wave of success at the start of 2010 and it is promising to see consumers respond well to the format.

"The industry is providing consumers with the most innovative and enjoyable home entertainment experiences, and we expect sales to increase as the penetration of HDTVs continues to accelerate."

This is all good news, but surely those betting big on Blu-ray will be a little concerned that the humble DVD is still outselling the format by 10 to one?

The entertainment industry will be hoping that another Avatar-like success will be just around the corner.

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.