TiVo too strong for Blu-ray devices in the US?

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Earlier this week at the Ceatec, a high-tech fair near Tokyo, Panasonic and Sony announced their new Blu-ray devices to play and record TV shows too. They will be available at first only in Japan and the companies have no plans to distribute their products in the US for now.

You may ask what this has to do with TiVo. The answer is that the reason Panasonic and Sony will not ship their Blu-ray devices is because “in the U.S.A. you record on TiVo” as one Toshiba executive declared. I do not have enough economical data to know if it makes sense but the US market is way too big to ignore it simply because there is already a big player like TiVo.

As for the winners TiVo obviously is favored by the absence of the Blu-ray devices and the same can be said about HD-DVD devices too. In the battle between the two standards (Blu-ray and HD-DVD) hitting earlier a market (especially one like the US one) can prove decisive to gaining a competitive advantage.

In Japan Toshiba with its HD-DVD devices has gained good market shares and will continue to do so until Panasonic and Sony will make their products available at the end of this year. Besides Toshiba also has an advantage in archiving space because their top device comes with a one terabyte hard-drive while their competitors will stop (at least for now) at 500GB produces.

To be fair however even if the Blu-ray devices were available in the US the battle would not be won so easily because their price is not that low. Panasonic Blu-ray recorders will be priced between $2200 and $2500 and the ones distributed by Sony will have a similar cost.

Until the Japanese manufactures hit the US market and lower their prices TiVo will have nothing to worry about.