Screen Media: Foreign Disc Sales Falling … and Will Keep Falling

DVD and Blu-ray sales dropped 3% in 2009; expected to decline about 20% by 2014

As the nattering nabobs of video-business negativism like to say, that light at the end of the tunnel just might be a train … or perhaps a downward-trending foreign market.

Screen Digest released dour figures Monday, revealing that international sales of DVDs, Blu-ray discs and other packaged media slid about 3 percent in 2009 to $17.1 billion.

Even worse, the London-based research firm predicts a sustained slide to $14.5 billion for the movie-disc business by 2014.

While U.S. sales of Blu-ray titles increased 70 percent last year, Screen Media attributed slow adoption of the format to its premium price amid a tough global economy.

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