GfK Retail & Technology is the major leader market researcher of the world that tracks and collects data of POS (point of sale) in media markets of entertainment and consumer technical items. GfK Retail & Technology receives data from resellers and retailers of more than seventy countries across the world. Reporting platform of GfK is “Star Track”. The data is then compiled by StarTrack and comparable information is provided to the industry leaders, manufacturers and retailers at both international and country level as well.

Figures of Japan GfK Retail & Technology reveal that the market share of Blu-ray recorders exceeded 50 percent for DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) recorders in unit terms. Market share of bluray disk recorders was 10 percent in October 2007 and since then its market share has shown rapid growth. Average sale prices in 2008 also came down. Blu-ray disk recorder’s average sale price in 1st week of June 2008 was about 110,000 to 120,000 Japanese Yen. During the 3rd week of October 2008, the price of Blu-ray recorders dropped and was between 100,000 to 110,000 Japanese Yen. Consumers shifting towards the blu-ray technology have really outpaced the DVD recorders. The sales growth of blu-ray is very impressive. The survey of GfK shows that the replacement of Blu-ray recorders with that of DVD technology is almost 1.5 times faster in comparison to the conversion of VHS recorders to the DVD recorders.

During April 2002, the DVD recorder’s market share exceeded 10 percent and its share grew steadily. After 82 weeks, its share surpassed 50 percent in November 2003. On the other hand, market share of blu-ray format at the end of October 2007 exceeded ten percent and at the start of November 2008 after 53 weeks its market share transcended 50 percent. One of the major and primary reasons that boosted the conversion rate towards the blu-ray disk technology was the increase in Flat Panel Television’s sales. Flat-Panel TVs enabled the consumers to experience and enjoy digital HD-broadcasting. The other fundamental reason that accelerated the sales of bluray disk format is its capability of recording HD broadcasting and there is no drop in quality of the content.

Blu-ray disk technology is the new version of storage products the primarily aims at high definition TV recording. Most of the UDO (Ultra Density Optical) specification items are based on the blu-ray technology. Blue laser (405nm) is used in bluray format with cover layer technology of 100 micron. Sony created the bluray HD technology and is able to record whole full length HDTV format movie on disk that is equivalent in size to common Compact disk or DVD. Blu-ray depends on the blue lazer and has the technology to encode & decode the information more finely in comparison to the red lazer technology utilized in DVD format. That is why blu-ray disk can record 25 Gigabytes of information on each side of the disk which makes it total of 50GB on both sides. Ability of Blu-ray disk format to hold large amounts of data offers huge possibilities for entertainment as well as computing. Bluray disks can archive more data amounts in form of software, digital photos, music and video. Data storage of 50GB on single bluray disk can make for large software packages. Ability of storing more data gives the blu-ray disk format edge over the other disk recording formats like the DVD technology introduced by Toshiba.