Powderkeg said:
Are you stupid?
Did you just say the number of owners is irrelevent in determining your potential market?
Way to go to start with an insult Powderkeg.
It's the number of HOUSEHOLDs not the number of TVs that determine the market for optical media. Every household in America could have an HDTV and there's still be a 3:1 ratio of SDTV : HDTV. That ratio won't do anything to impair uptake of HD media, regardless of whether hybrid disks exist or not, although if a hybrid format wins, it will toss your argument completely in the shitter. You quote SDTV numbers, but don't even bother to check if there is a 1:1 mapping between SDTV and DVD.
Moreover, the demographics of those who buy HDTVs are exactly those that movie studios love.
So you claim. Got any proof?
Consumer Electronics Association of America said:
Arlington, Va., April 15, 2005 - The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) today announced that February 2005 unit sales to dealers of direct view and rear projection digital television (DTV) products rose 43 percent over February 2004, showing continued strength in this key consumer electronics product category. CEA stated that February sales reached 342,060 units on dollar sales of $443 million. Year-to-date unit sales are up 14 percent over the first two months of 2004 and full year 2005 sales are expected to more than double the final 2004 total of 7.3 million units. CEA also announced that total February 2005 sales of DTV products including monitors displays and integrated sets reached 498,554 units on dollar sales of $699.4 million, marking a 29 percent increase over combined sales in February 2004. "Digital television, particularly HDTV (high-definition television) remains the fastest-growing segment of the consumer electronics industry, driven by strong consumer demand for flat-panel and rear-projection HDTV products," said CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro. "At the same time, however, the rate of growth is slower than we originally anticipated, due to a variety of factors." CEA is revising its full-year 2005 projections for DTV product sales to 15 million units from the previously announced 20 million.
So 15 million units in 2005, 7 million in 2004.
From 2003 article
Consumer Electronics Association of America said:
From product introduction to date, DTV product sales total 5,851,621 units, with a consumer dollar investment of some $10.3 billion. CEA projects 4 million units will be sold in 2003, 5.4 million in 2004, 8 million in 2005 and 10.5 million in 2006. CEA defines DTV products as integrated sets and monitors displaying active vertical scanning lines of at least 480p and, in the case of integrated sets, receiving and decoding ATSC terrestrial digital transmissions.
So prior from 2003 and prior, only about 6 million units had been sold. But 4 million were projected to be sold in 2003, leaving 2 million for 2002 and prior.
So we have: 2,4,7,15. Looks exponential to me. Based on that, there are now 28 million DTVs. According to CEA since 2003, 87% of DTV sales have been HDTV. So atleast 87% of 26 million = 22 million HDTVs at the beginning of 2006, or 1 in 5 households. More than enough high-income upper middle class households to drive the hi-def optical media market in its early adopter phase.
And even if 100% of new sets sold were HDTV, how much difference does that make? The average owner uses the same TV for 10+ years, so anyone who has bought a TV in the past year 5 years isn't likely to buy another one within the next 5.
It would make a lot of difference, since CEA projects that most people *are* upgrading their sets.
(comment about sports bars deleted). That's the best you've got? How many of your 300 million TVs are old and busted sets sitting in people's garage, or sitting in guest rooms that are never used? My family used to have about 5 TVs in the house. One of them was the living room (color). One was hooked up to my VIC-20. The rest were black and white sets in bedrooms, many of them aging and barely working.
And the cart NEVER pulls the horse. Simply having a product doesn't create demand, and having an extremely expensive product doesn't lend to a high rate of adoption.
It is content which drives the market. In surveys of intent to purchase HDTV, the #1 reason cited for not buying (next to price) was lack of content. The availability and ubiquitity of hi-def optical media certainly WILL influence consumers to get an HDTV. All CE product follows the standard market uptake curve: pioneer, early adopter, early majority, late majority, and laggard. CE product pricing follows this curve.
It has never been a problem in the past, and no new CE market that I can think of, started with a product originally priced so that late majority types can afford them. Not radios, not TVs, not cars, not VCRs, not DVDs, not computers, not mobile phones, and not even consoles.
Given manufacturing cost curves, and the known adoption curve, it makes little sense to cut prices so low unless you have a vigorous competitor (e.g. price war). HDTV has no competitor for next-gen display format. They have no fear that if uptake is too slow, they will be frozen out of the market. HDTV is inevitable.
Many studies predict that HDTV prices are already transistioning from the luxury to mainstream and that 2006 could be the breakout year.
HDTV will NEVER be mainstream until it is priced for the mainstream market. That's sub-$300 sets with over 27" of screen size. Unitl HDTV can match that, it will always be the bastard child set owned only by the rich. Everyone wants a Ferrari, but you don't see them outselling Honda any time soon, do you?
Unless you think the middle class are rich, you're wrong. Middle class consumers are already financing the purchase of $600-1000 sets this year. Secondly, does $350 30" widescreen CRT count?
Summary: year over year sales of HDTVs are growing exponentially. By the time the PS3 is launched, roughly 1 in 5 households should have one. In 2006, we have HD-DVD, PS3/BluRay, and DirectTV's launch of 1000 HD stations in 2007. All of these carts are being manufactured before the horse, and horses are going to bridle themselves onto them.
