Not only is Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) starting to favor the next generation Blu-ray movie disc format over the competing HD DVD format, but the largest consumer electronics retailer in the U.S. is going to just give away HD DVD players to customers to get rid of them.Well, not exactly. The Toshiba HD-A3 player will be part of a special promotion for customers who purchase an entire audio system from the retailer. In this week's circular, a $900 audio system featured the free Toshiba HD DVD player.
At the same time, Best Buy will be dwindling down its HD DVD movie disc selection and promoting the Blu-ray format much more heavily. So let me get this straight -- give away an HD DVD player, then decrease the amount of movies available for it on the road to an eventual drop of the format completely. Sounds like a recipe for customer success.
Most likely, the most sound strategy is that Best Buy wants to get rid of HD DVD player stock as much as possible so that it can eventually move exclusively to Blu-ray. First, give the players away (and look for more aggressive promos in the future), and then start discounting the movie titles. If this isn't another large sign that Blu-ray has won the format war, I'm not sure what is.
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