Growth in Blu-ray Production Equipment for Singulus

The SINGULUS TECHNOLOGIES AG reports increasing sales and earnings figures for the optical disc production equipment business area.

SINGULUS was able to record significantly more orders – especially in the Blu-ray disc growth market – therefore marking a continual positive development in the Optical Disc division.

Long-time customers continue to invest in the production of Blu-ray discs. In terms of sales of Blu-ray machines, SINGULUS is within the range of its own full-year forecast and projects 45 to 50 new machine orders for the full-year. The continuous growing number of orders underlines the technological leadership of SINGULUS’ production and replication lines for 50 GB Blu-ray discs and confirms the expected growth in this segment.

In the coming years SINGULUS expects significant growth in demand for Blu-ray discs. According to the German Association of Audiovisual Media, for the high-definition format exceeded the triple-digit million Euro mark for the first time in Germany with Blu-ray sales of € 04 million (€82 million in 2010) in the first half of 2011. Currently, more than every sixth Euro of sales is generated with sales of Blu-ray discs. Since most of the new movies like the new Harry Potter in 2D and 3D, the Star Wars Saga, X-Factor for example and more are only released in the second half of 2011, SINGULUS projects a further increase of Blu-ray sales figures in the next couple of months. More than 5,500 movies are currently available on Blu-ray disc in Germany (source: bluray-disc.de); by the end of the year, a further 849 Blu-ray discs are due to be released.

Europe is slowly closing the gap
to the US Blu-ray growth market
The US is currently the biggest sales market for Blu-ray discs. According to studies of Digital Entertainment Group (USA), the sales figures in the US Blu-ray market grew by 10 % in the first half-year of 2011 compared with the same period one year ago.

Futuresource Consulting Ltd. forecasts a global production of 811 million Blu-ray discs in 2011 – an increase of 38 % compared with 2010. In the US, the biggest Blu-ray market, the production volume is even set to expand by 49 %. Similar growth figures are projected for Europe in 2011. In addition, the market research institute expects the minimum required global production capacity of machines for the manufacturing of Blu-ray discs to grow from about 1.274 billion discs in 2010 to 1.736 billion discs in 2011. Futuresource expects 2.952 billion discs by 2015.