• Blu-ray shipments collapsed sharply as consumer habits shifted toward digital storage
• Major manufacturers are steadily abandoning Blu-ray hardware production
• Verbatim and I-O Data continue supporting Blu-ray supply despite industry exits

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, with multiple firms stepping away from recordable Blu-ray production in recent years.

According to JEITA, Blu-ray recorder shipments dramatically fell by about 90% in Japan, moving from 6.3 million units in 2011 to 620,000 units in 2025.

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Market contraction and manufacturer exits

Sony shipped its final domestic Blu-ray recorders i in February, effectively ending a product line that had already been reduced to minimal volumes.

Buffalo's Japanese arm announced it would not produce successors to its current portable USB Blu-ray writers.

Elecom posted termination notices for its external drives last month, with end-of-sale dates running into June this year.

LG exited the market back in 2024, having last released a new Blu-ray product in 2018.

Despite this exodus of major manufacturers, Verbatim Japan and I-O Data have widened their joint commitment to keep recordable Blu-ray 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 disc media after Sony confirmed it was shutting down its last domestic recordable Blu-ray factory.

The renewed commitment goes further by adding drive components and products to the partnership's scope.

At the moment, Panasonic is the only vertically integrated Japanese manufacturer still producing Blu-ray TV recorders.

The company apologized in March for its inability to keep up with orders for its DMR-ZR1 4K DIGA recorder and promised to expand production to meet demand.

This suggests that a niche but persistent customer base still values physical media for data preservation.

Before making the renewed pledge, Verbatim Japan and I-O Data had announced the BD Reco, a Windows-compatible external Blu-ray drive that I-O Data released in February this year.

In a statement, the company claims that the device "has attracted a great deal of interest."

"We have once again recognized that the need to 'record data I want to keep onto a disc I have on hand' continues to genuinely exist," the company added.

Although Blu-ray discs serve a niche market, their practical limitations remain evident, particularly as many users still rely on 25GB single-layer discs despite the availability of higher-capacity options.

This constraint becomes more noticeable when handling large video files from modern devices, where storage needs can quickly exceed that limit.

Multi-layer formats exist, although concerns around cost and reliability persist for some users, which can limit wider adoption.

Blu-ray still appears to offer higher video and audio quality than many streaming services, particularly in UHD formats, but it remains unclear whether that difference is enough to sustain broader demand in the long term.

Via Tom's Hardware

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