DVD and beyond - Japan's Blu-ray Disc market keeps growing, topping $1 billion last year.

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Japan's Blu-ray Disc market keeps growing, topping $1 billion last year.

Japan's Blu-ray Disc market in 2014 was in its fifth consecutive year of growth, worth a total of ¥123.67 billion (around $1.04 billion) - a 13.6% increase from 2013, with 17.068 million units sold (17.3% increase), according to market research company Oricon's latest report.

For its part, the DVD market was worth ¥128 billion - a 12.1% decrease over the previous year), with sales of 26.432 million units - a 15% decrease). Thus, the total home video disc market hit ¥251.67 billion (just over $2.13 billion), a fall of 1.1%), with unit sales of 43.5 million.

AnimeNewsNetwork, reporting on Oricon research published Tokushima Shimbun notes that animation DVDs and Blu-rays accounted for the largest segment of the total disc market - worth ¥87.63 billion (around $730 million) with sales of 12.658 million discs (an increase of 5.8%). The top seller was Walt Disney Animation Studios' Frozen that sold 2.269 million copies, and was the highest seller of the year in the animation segment. The DVD/Blu-ray Music segment generated ¥71.5 billion (around $600 million).

Story filed 23.03.15