Samsung gets out of the 4K Blu-ray business
Follows in the footsteps of Oppo, so should Sony exit (that market) as well?
Here’s a bit of news that’s technically a bit old¹, but one that still has profound effects for the market and signals what consumers find important — hint, it’s not 4K Blu-ray. John Archer writes for Forbes:
I wasn’t given any specific reasons for this decision, but presumably Samsung figured that it likely wouldn’t be able to take enough market share (in what’s already a niche hardware market) from the likes of Panasonic and Sony to justify a full production run. Especially if its new deck was going to follow the same line as Samsung’s TVs and not include support for Dolby Vision playback.
Regardless of whether or not the now canned Samsung player could have been a winner, as someone who loves the premium quality of the 4K Blu-ray format I’m sad to see such a major electronics brand giving up on 4K BD hardware production. Especially as it comes on the back of the news last year that even Oppo was pulling out of making new players, despite their debut models receiving rave reviews from almost everyone who tested them.
Now one might argue that it’s simply Samsung who is pulling out and that there is a market for 4K Blu-ray. However, if that were true, Samsung, who now boasts the position Sony used to enjoy as one of the top consumer product makers in the world (in terms of volume), wouldn’t be exiting this market if they saw a future in it. After all, this is Samsung we’re talking about, that makes and copies just about any product in existence. If consumers were buying 4K Blu-ray players in any meaningful volume, surely they’d keep making them, but it’s quite clear to me that Blu-ray is likely the last physical format with any kind of meaningful marketshare and that 4K Blu-ray will be a footnote in history.
John goes on to note that
the latest disc sales stats for the US show 4K Blu-rays accounting for just 5.3% of sales, while DVD — yes, DVD — still claims 57.9%
For everybody else, there’s Netflix and Amazon Prime who will be joined by Apple TV+ and Disney+ this fall in providing no shortage of 4K content — many which are exclusive to their respective platforms and just a few clicks away on all sorts of devices.
The upside to all of this is that, with Samsung no longer a player in the 4K UHD market², it leaves room for 2019 Sony 4K Blu-ray players to breathe a little and maybe pick up some extra marketshare,
but with prices starting over $250 and discs that still cost $30+ a pop which is the cost of a month’s subscription of Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Go combined, it’s easy to see why consumers aren’t flocking to 4K players. In fact, chances are that you’d be hard pressed to find anybody under the age of 35 or maybe even 40 who consumes new movies via a physical format like 4K Blu-ray or even regular-ol’ Blu-ray.
This then begs the question — will Sony also leave this market, seeing how little demand there is for it?
Judging from all the other decisions Sony has made, like their continued development of Walkman players and not giving up on Xperia, despite nearly no sales, I’m reluctant to believe they’ll also exit this category. Instead, they’ll likely continue to dump money into R&D for a market that’s clearly shrinking year after year, though I wished they’d drop many of their products and instead focus on making a select few hits.
For home theater enthusiasts, this is technically great news because Sony still produces some of the best hardware around, but from a business perspective, it’s likely Samsung who is making the better decision by getting out early-ish. After all, it’s Samsung who acts like a market leader when it comes to home theater and not Sony³.
¹ Came out right when I was starting my chemo treatment so I’m not too surprised it went by without me noticing.
² 🤮 Such a gross name. Not sure why anybody thought UHD Blu-ray is a better name than 4K Blu-ray.
³ That’s both sad and heartbreaking to write.
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