WALMART, the largest retailer in the world, has decided to sell Blu-Ray exclusively. Considering that Walmart tends to sell cheap and inferior electronic products the reasons behind the decision to choose a more expensive alternative must probably be very compelling.
Walmart could have waited until HD-DVD died by itself. There is no rush to make a decision since it benefits from the sale of both formats.
It appears more that a strategic or perhaps financial alliance has been made between different parties and it is in the interest of one of the party to speed up the death blow so that everyone can turn to the victorious format as the format to go.
Will consumers benefit from Blu-Ray victory?
Because of competitions between those two formats the prices both for the players and the media have crumbled significantly in the last few months.
The question is, now that the competitor is slain, is there any rush to drop the prices? The prices will certainly go down, but probably not as fast as we would anticipate.
This is a common marketing strategy, kill the competitor by slashing the prices and then monopolize the prices. Of course it has to be subtly done, not so overt.
If the price of an HD-DVD player is around $100 today it shows the enormous profit margin associated in those equipments. The percentage margin is probably higher for the media. The manufacturing cost of a Blu-Ray disc should not be significantly higher than that for a DVD. Blank CDs are sometimes more expensive than blank DVDs.
Consumers will have no alternative but to choose Blu-Ray and they are going to have to pay for it.
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