UPDATE: Correcting the number of HD DVD players sold in total and throughout the campaign. Note: the number of HD DVD players sold during the campaing was obtained from a third-party source.

Following a rather pale HD DVD marketing campaign that kicked off in May, 2007, Toshiba Corp. substantially cut sales estimates of its high definition video players in the USA for the year. It is unclear whether the reduction of sales expectations were conditioned by the success of competing Blu-ray standard or emergence of third-party HD DVD players, but in any case the news is not good for HD DVD overall.

The HD DVD marketing campaign started on the 20^th of May, 2007, and is going to last through 16^th of June. During the campaign end-users can acquire Toshiba HD-A2 player for $299 instead of $399 and get five HD DVD titles for free, which is a rather interesting offering.

Unfortunately for Toshiba, as of 11^th of June, consumers have purchased only 50 thousand of dedicated HD DVD players available on the market starting from 20^th of May. Toshiba does have reasons to celebrate though: the HD-A2 model has also reached the top-seller mark among all DVD players on Amazon.com, and is officially the best-selling next-gen DVD player model to date. Nonetheless, the company also announced reduction of HD DVD players’ sales estimates in the USA this year claiming “slow” sales. According to Toshiba, life-to-date sales of HD DVD players have topped 150 thousand units.

“Sales in the U.S. have been slower than expected, and we are going to have to lower our U.S. sales forecast,” said Yoshihide Fujii, head of Toshiba’s digital consumer business, reports Reuters news-agency.

The electronics giant now expects to sell 1 million next-generation optical disc players in North America by the end of calendar 2007, down 44% from its previous estimate of 1.8 million unit sales. As a result, the company will have to lower global HD DVD player sales estimates as well. It was expected that Toshiba will sell 3 million HD DVD players and recorders worldwide by the end of the business year to March 2008.

Blu-ray disc fiercely competes with HD DVD format to replace conventional DVD in future. While Blu-ray offers larger storage space for content, HD DVD drives and discs are easier and cheaper to produce. Due to widespread confusion among customers which format to choose, different manufacturers offer different kinds of solutions: LG and Samsung offer hybrid BD/HD DVD players and optical drives, whereas companies like Sony and Toshiba offer more affordable Blu-ray-only and HD DVD-only players.