"Persuing the Truth in Audio & Video..."
That's what it says at the top of the site, at the top of every page when I am here. No offense, but a second grader would read that and not have a clue what exactly is being discussed, a journalism major should look at the 'interview' and toss it out the window.
That would be
Pursuing, but truth is subjective and Googling other misinterpretations does not prove anything, so believe what you want, but the article clearly shows Mr. Griffiths speaking about Blu-ray despite a subsequent logical discontinuity that suggested to some that he thinks OLED will be Blu-ray's replacement.
Neither Mr. Griifiths nor Samsung have refuted what was printed by Pocket-Lint about the content of the original interview concerning Blu-ray's lifespan. So, unless they do, that is the only truth we have.
And as you can well imagine if Griffiths was speaking out of turn about company views, a large corporation like Samsung would very likely disown his statements publicly.
The issue is the same no matter how it is read - there is nothing clear, defined, or specific about what is being spoken of, and when I Googled Andy Griffiths Samsung, one of the first hits proclaims how Blu-ray will be dead because OLED will replace it.
Is it beginning to sink in just how poorly written the original article was?
The article was not particularly well written, but it is readable. If second grade reading comprehension skills are insufficient, I might suggest taking the next educational step and attend third grade.
What is interesting is that many of the articles I previously listed seem to have been aware of the logical discontinuity as well and clearly understood that Griffiths was not citing OLED as a direct replacement for Blu-ray.
Perhaps try reading beyond the first hit from Google.
A VP is likely interested in a bottom line, and a large CE like Samsung sees major revenue from highest dollar products, and newest trends with minimal competition from cut-rate import companies. LCD is not the hot product for them anymore, it is now Blu-ray. OLED is likely the one to replace Blu-ray as the hot product.
If one spends some time taking economics courses, one will find that there is actually opportunity to make more money by growing a market with lower prices than by trying to make maximum marginal profits but leaving a market small/nitch. A company with a monopoly position does not necessarily make more money than the same company would in a competitive market if the competition grows the market, but the fear of losing to the competition keeps companies aiming for monopolies.
This gets into the market elasticity of demand curves which are not really linear or even just slightly curved as shown in elementary texts, but if there is a disproportionate increase in demand when crossing below a certain price threshold, more total revenue can be made by increased unit sales that produces greater profits than keeping prices higher with a correspondingly higher profit margin.
Samsung will still make money when prices drop and demand increases, they seem to have managed well enough on low price DVD players, just like everyone else.
At what point does Audioholics start to believe that the BDA, with the worlds top CEs involved, actually has a clue what they are talking about?
There are many others besides Audioholics who feel that Blu-ray may have been a stop gap measure.
Even Sony is starting to push downloadable content through their
best selling Blu-ray player, the PS3.
If that does not bring some irony to this whole conversation, nothing will.
It is a logical fallacy to assume that large corporations know what they are doing because they have gotten large. Rarely are these corporations still run by the visionaries who grew them in the first place. They are now run by caretakers with MBAs, often without any technical knowledge about the products the companies actually manufacture.
For a look at corporate wisdom about markets:
- We can look to the large corporations who form the RIAA who still have not figured out how to survive in the digital age and everyone has become a pirate, according to them.
- We can look to our giant financial corporations who so bollixed the mortgage markets that the entire banking system is now so deeply in jeopardy that the government is going to spend $700 billion of yours, mine, and every other American's tax dollars to keep it from collapsing.
- The American auto industry seems to have miscalculated about the market a bit as well.
I could go on, but companies come and go, including large companies.
The guys who run financial corporations like Lehman Brothers and Bears Stearns could probably buy some of these CE manufacturers, whole, with their yearly bonuses, but look at what's left of the financial markets after suffering their wisdom.
As for Audioholics' views about the viability of Blu-ray in the long term, I will let the other writers and articles speak for themselves.
Personally, I collect physical media and prefer it myself, but I don't see it surviving as the dominant medium in the future when faced with downloading. There are a lot of non-consumer electronics companies with vested interests in developing the market for digital distribution as fast as they can.
How long that will take has yet to be determined, but your opinion on the matter is no more or less valid than that of anyone else; what will happen will happen.
And when it does, if the MPAA shows as much foresight as the RIAA, they will fight the transition all the way, creating pirates out of would be consumers along the way as they cling to the past of selling shiny plastic discs and refusing to supply customers with the products and services they want in the way that they want them.
That is my opinion, you are welcome to yours, but without prescience, who ever happens to have guessed right about the future outcome, it doesn't make their guess right, just lucky.
Good day to you as well.
