Alarm bells come too late for Sony Pictures | The Media Wonk

Alarm bells come too late for Sony Pictures | The Media Wonk: "# For 2009-2012, we [previously] forecast overall U.S. home entertainment industry revenues to decline at a -2.1% CAGR. This underscores the mature nature of the industry, plus the importance of share gains for individual players. Over this time frame, aggregate operating profit declines of low single digits are also expected.
# Now one year later, looking at the cold hard facts of 2009, retail spending on sell-through DVDs and Blu-Ray discs dropped by -18% while rental of these products actually increased by 4%. As a result, the sell-through of physical discs declined from 63% of the market to 57%.
# This massive change in behavior continues to have negative implications for studio profitability as every home video executive would rather book the $16 of profit contribution per transaction from selling a disc vs. the $3.50 to $1.40 per disc profit contribution from rental.
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# Our analysis also shows that the Blu-Ray format is having a more modest acceptance rate that traditional DVD. In 2009, three years after its introduction, Blu-Ray’s penetration of TV households stood at 4.4%, compared to 13.0% for DVDs in 2000. We also find that Blu-Ray [sic] has seen lower numbers of titles shipped per converted household relative to DVD. We don’t see Blu-Ray stemming the decline of physical sales."