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Blu-ray Prices Spike, Give Oil A Run For Its Money
Electronics | May 10, 08
With Toshiba's HD-DVD ambitions now a shattered dream, press reports have Sony having difficulty supplying enough Blu-ray players over the last month or so. This may well be contributing to the sharp increase in Blu-ray vendor pricing we've been witnessing over the preceding ten weeks or so.
To be sure, the market seems to have anticipated Blu-ray's conquest of HD-DVD even before Toshiba threw in the towel, as was noted in the space at the end of February (see "Blu-ray Boosts Inflation As HD-DVD Dies"). Since then, the Blu-ray price rally has become only more dramatic. PriceSCAN's Blu-ray index has been in bullish mode since the end of the year, rising from 75 to 90, with over a third of the gain occurring since the above-mentioned blog entry.
Specifically, consider the most popular Sony Blu-ray Player on PriceSCAN, the BDP-S300, whose lowest vendor offer price on this site has risen from $275 to $370 over the last four months, with about half that gain coming in the last eight weeks (see chart below).
Time Period: 6/4/2007 through 5/5/2008
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
Going to a non-Sony player provides no relief, with the Samsung BD-P1400, the most popular Blu-ray player listed here, having seen its lowest vendor offered price jump from around $270 to $400 in the same time frame, with about $110 of that increase coming in the last two months.
Time Period: 9/3/2007 through 5/5/2008
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
Consumers used to relentlessly declining prices of tech goods may find increases of more than 33% in a matter of just a few months more than a little disorienting. But hey, to make that gain seem more familiar, just consider what you're paying for a tank of gas, or a loaf of bread, or some copper pipe, or…well, you get the idea.
Posted by jeffrey.trester (Permalink)
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