Mark Leathan the Marketing Director at Samsung said "The market for Blu ray is starting to pick up and you can bet with the entry of the Chinese manufacturers into the Blu ray market that we will have a $99 Blu ray player to compete against".
In an effort to spur Blu-ray growth and drop prices of the format, Sony, Panasonic and Philips have created a licensing entity for Blu-ray products which saw several Chinese manufacturers take up licensing deals in the last quarter of 2008. The venture will lower licensing fees and have fewer unlicensed products, passing the savings along to consumers.
Questions are also being asked as to whether the Sony PS3 Playstation is a Blu ray player or a gaming console when it comes to researchers counting the sale? According to the latest audit of the Blu ray market by Adams Media Research it is both.
The research Company has also said that sales of Blu ray players have almost doubled in the first quarter of 2009 and that in the US market 9 million Blu-ray discs were sold in that period. The year-to-date 2009 sales are nearly double that of 2008, which saw 4.8 million discs sold during the first quarter.
