Analysts: 29 million homes to adopt Blu-ray this year

It’s been a while since we last heard about the format war – now, we get an update, and it’s from the Strategy Analytics Connected Home Devices service. After a lot of research and studies, they’ve predicted that by the end of this year, more than 29 million homes will have a Blu-ray device, be it a stand-alone player, a Sony PlayStation 3, or even a PC. Check out all the predictions in the full article.

With the format war over and done with as far as HD-DVD is concerned, analysts are now forming their own opinion about what will play out in the next couple of months, in terms of technology adoption and home penetration. Through extensive research and studies, they have concluded that at least 29.4 million homes will have a Blu-ray player by the end of 2009, and 132 million more will be enjoying movies at Blu-ray definition in 2012. Wow.

Here’s a direct quote from one of the analysts, David Mercer:

HD-DVDÂ’s withdrawal leaves the way open for Blu-ray to become a major revenue earner for technology vendors and content owners alike.

The 265 million homes that will own an HDTV by 2012, and HollywoodÂ’s need for a new growth engine, represent huge incentives for the industry to coordinate marketing activities and demonstrate unified support for the successor to DVD.

Well, that certainly sounds conclusive. And when you figure in more stats from the Strategy Analytics Report, it definitely makes sense – these stats being that the global sales of Blu-ray devices will reach 18.8 million units in 2008 (that includes 4 million stand-alone players, 13 million consoles and nearly 2 million PCs). Four years after, the sales would have ballooned to 57.4 million units, with Europe being the largest consumer, garnering more than 26 million units.

While we can certainly agree with the deal that HD-DVD backing out means more business for Blu-ray, we also can’t help but think that it could be a bit optimistic. After all, just how much of high-definition do you really want in a movie? And there’s the deal with movies being meant to be watched in a cinema, with friends and family – did that get figured out in the Strategy Analytics Report? We may never know, but one thing’s clear: Sony‘s about to make a huge killing. Updates as we get them.