14 DAY TRIAL // When 2008 started, everyone hoped to see a conclusion of the next-generation DVD format war between Toshiba's HD DVD and Sony's Blu-ray. In the end, Blu-ray has officially won this "battle," with Toshiba admitting defeat and moving on to other segments of the CE market. However, this victory might be relatively short-lived (compared to the lifespan of the DVD format, for example), at least according to what a Samsung manager has to say.
Thus, in an interview for the Pocket-lint website, Andy Griffiths, director of consumer electronics at Samsung UK, stated that the format backed by Sony "has 5 years left," then adding that he "certainly wouldn't give it 10." Nevertheless, the format will most likely enjoy a huge level of success over the course of 2008 and the next 2-3 years, before its possible rivals emerge. Moreover, Samsung seems to be taking a pretty big slice of this pie, the company's standalone players enjoying a considerable level of success.
Unfortunately, the Samsung representative doesn't point out any technologies as a possible Blu-ray replacement, and it's quite difficult to place a bet on just what the respective tech will be, especially since there are so many to choose from: flash memory, cloud-like computing environments, holographic storage... who knows, sky's the limit.
OK, so all in all, this might be just the personal opinion of Mr. Griffiths. However, since he's a top-executive of one of the world's largest consumer electronics manufacturers, he might actually be on to something.
Actually, if this prediction turns out to be right, we might witness a very strange situation: the parallel death of both last-gen (DVD) and next-gen (Blu-ray) optical discs, since the DVD will most likely still be around in 5 years. Yes, folks, the future's a very interesting one...