PR disaster or just a blip?
Despite the HD DVD Promotional Group boasting about HD DVD hardware outselling Blu-ray, and Toshiba's best efforts to push the HD DVD format, it seems that their sales targets have had to be revised — downwards.
According to DailyTech, Toshiba has reduced its forecasts for the 2007 calendar year from 1.8 million units sold in North America to 1 million units - a 44% decrease.
"Obviously we are going to have to lower our previous global estimate," said Yoshihide Fujii, Toshiba's head of consumer electronics.
So, HD DVD hardware may well be outselling Blu-ray, but this suggests that neither format is particularly healthy. Early adopters might be getting excited and taking sides in the format war, but regular consumers either don't know, don't care, or are worried by the high definition disc format shoot-out, and are sticking to DVD where it's safe.
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