Now that the format war is done and dusted, Blu-ray hardware penetration will rise to nearly 30 million homes worldwide this year, according to a report by the Strategy Analytics Connected Home Devices Services.

The calculation is that overall 18.8 million Blu-ray units will be sold in 2008 which breaks down into four million stand-alone set-tops, 13 million PlayStation 3 consoles and 2 million PC-based Blu-ray drives.

And, by 2012, sales of Blu-ray devices will be 57.4 million units with more than 132 million homes worldwide with at least one Blu-ray device.

"HD DVD’s withdrawal leaves the way open for Blu-ray to become a major revenue earner for technology vendors and content owners alike", said David Mercer, principal analyst at Strategy Analytics.

"The 265 million homes that will own an HDTV by 2012, and Hollywood’s need for a new growth engine, represent huge incentives for the industry to coordinate marketing activities and demonstrate unified support for the successor to DVD."

>> Via - Videobusiness