In the War of Supporters, Blu-Ray Has a Big Lead
HD DVD and Blu-ray have similar number of supporters, but Blu-ray has the lead in quality
By the HDBlu.com Staff – November 6, 2006
HD DVD and Blu-ray have impressive lists of supporters including Toshiba, Intel, Microsoft, Sony, Dell, and Apple. But how do you compare the quality of their supporters? While Blu-ray and HD DVD have a similar number of supporters (172 and 133, respectively), our analysis shows that Blu-ray is way out in front when it comes to supporter quality.
Partner quality is a complex thing and certainly impossible to measure exactly. But in our simplified analysis, we tried to get an idea of two things - how much money and how many people does each format have working for it. To estimate those factors, we looked at the market cap and number of employees of each format's public supporters.
The results of this analysis were telling. The figure below shows that Blu-ray not only has the lead in number of supporters, but also has more market cap muscle and more employees behind it. And since the requirements to become a Blu-ray supporter are higher, we think that Blu-ray is winning the battle for partner support.
So what does it mean to be a supporter?
Each format has its own formal definitions for what it means to be a "supporter". The Blu-ray Disc Association has 3 levels of support: Board of Directors, Contributor, and General Member. HD DVD has a similar structure, consisting of Managing Member, General Member, and Associate Member. Each of those levels of support also has different levels of financial commitment, shown below. Joining the Blu-ray Disc Association entails about a 10x higher financial commitment than joining the HD DVD Promotion Group.
Which format has the "best" support?
Blu-ray has the lead in absolute number of supporters, with 172 to HD DVD's 133. This might not be that surprising since Blu-ray started gathering support in mid-2002 and HD DVD not until late-2004. Blu-ray did a good job building its board of directors early, and maintains an advantage in supporters to this day, especially at the highest levels.
Blu-ray also has a much larger number of public company supporters, with 89 to HD DVD's 49. Because of this, Blu-ray has a lead in market capitalization of public supporters of $1 trillion compared to HD DVD's $700 billion. In addition to this, the market cap of the highest level of Blu-ray supporters, the board of directors, is itself $600 billion - almost as large as the market cap muscle behind HD DVD's total support. And if you were to take away Microsoft (the biggest company across both groups with almost $300 billion in market cap), Blu-ray's support would dwarf that of HD DVD.
Blu-ray also has a big lead in the number of employees its public company supporters have, with almost 3 million, more than double the number that HD DVD public company supporters report. And as illustrated below, the number of employees behind Blu-ray's BOD is greater than all of HD DVD's supporters combined.
So does this mean Blu-ray is going to win the format war?
While we did our best to measure the quality of support each format has, it is an extremely complex animal. Small supporters could have a big impact if they judge their work for the format to be strategically important, while big company bureaucracy could make their support for a format irrelevant. Since data on small and private company supporters is less accessible, we'll just have to wait and see how the game plays out. For more information on supporters of each format, go to blu-raydisc.com and hddvdprg.com. Check back here soon for more developments. HDBlu.com - Your one-stop resource for high definition.