- Blu-ray shipments collapsed dramatically as consumer habits shifted toward digital storage
- Major manufacturers are gradually abandoning Blu-ray hardware production
- Verbatim and IO Data continue to support Blu-ray supply despite industry departures
The consumer optical disc business has been in steady decline for more than a decade, largely displaced by cloud storage, streaming platforms and on-demand digital distribution.
The contraction has reshaped hardware manufacturing priorities, and several companies have moved away from producing recordable Blu-ray discs in recent years.
According to JEITA, shipments of Blu-ray recorders fell dramatically by approximately 90% in Japan, dropping from 6.3 million units in 2011 to 620,000 units in 2025.
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Market contraction and manufacturers leaving
Sony shipped its last domestic Blu-ray recorders in February, effectively ending a product line that had already shrunk to minimal volumes.
Buffalo’s Japanese branch announced that it would not produce successors to its current portable USB Blu-ray recorders.
Elecom published termination notices for its outdoor units last month, with end-of-sale dates stretching back to June of this year.
LG exited the market in 2024 and last released a new Blu-ray product in 2018.
Despite this exodus of major manufacturers, Verbatim Japan and IO Data have expanded their joint commitment to keep Blu-ray recordable products on Japanese shelves.
The two companies stated that they would secure components and adjust production lines to continue developing new products and supplying the domestic market.
In February last year, the pair issued a similar statement focused on discs after Sony confirmed it would close its last domestic recordable Blu-ray factory.
The renewed commitment goes further by adding propulsion components and products to the partnership’s reach.
At the moment, Panasonic is the only vertically integrated Japanese manufacturer that still produces Blu-ray TV recorders.
The company apologized in March for its inability to fulfill orders for its DIGA 4K DMR-ZR1 recorder and promised to expand production to meet demand.
This suggests that a specialized but persistent customer base still values physical media for data preservation.
Before renewing the commitment, Verbatim Japan and IO Data had announced BD Reco, a Windows-compatible external Blu-ray drive that IO Data launched in February this year.
In a statement, the company says the device “has sparked great interest.”
“We have once again recognized that the need to ‘burn the data I want to keep on a disk I have on hand’ genuinely still exists,” the company added.
Although Blu-ray discs serve a niche market, their practical limitations remain evident, especially since many users still rely on 25GB single-layer discs despite the availability of higher capacity options.
This limitation becomes more apparent when handling large video files from modern devices, where storage needs can quickly exceed that limit.
Multi-layer formats exist, although concerns remain about cost and reliability for some users, which may limit wider adoption.
Blu-ray still appears to offer superior video and audio quality to many streaming services, particularly in UHD formats, but it’s not yet clear whether that difference is enough to sustain broader long-term demand.
Through Tom Hardware
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