Samsung is no longer making Blu-ray players for the US market. Samsung was never leading the market, however, their removal from the market shows bad signs for the Blu-ray and physical media market in general. Samsung is not the first to leave the market, last year Oppo left the market as well. This is not really surprising considering the continued dominance of streaming services.
Streaming continues to squeeze out all the remaining market share of media consumption from physical media. Streaming is more convenient, and cheaper than ever before. This combined with the tsunami of streaming services currently available or planned for the near future for consumers to choose from. Everything you could possibly want to watch is available to stream somewhere and taking away the physical element just removes barriers for consumers to consume media. Blu-ray never took off the same way that DVD’s did before them, so the market was already small by comparison.
Lastly, popular modern game consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One use Blu-ray players to read their game discs, so there is no reason for consumers to go out and buy a standalone Blu-ray player. Movies, TV shows, video games, all of which are huge markets are all moving increasingly fast towards an all-digital future thanks to the cheapening market for cloud-based server infrastructure that is the backbone of these streaming services.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/samsung-says-it-will-stop-making-new-blu-ray-players/
I think Blu-ray is facing the same technological cycle as the music industry faced. The music industry started with physical analog copies of recordings on vinyl and slowly shifted to smaller compact physical forms until it became dominated by digital recordings. The music industry still has niche markets that enjoy having physical copies of their music. I think the same will hold true for Blu-ray and smaller niche markets will remain loyal to the format. I think its also why Netflix still offers their disc mailing program and hasn’t scrapped the program that built it into the steaming power house it is today. Just like their is still a small turntable market today, I think the Blu-ray player will still stick around for years to come albeit produced in far less quantities.
I agree with you completely about blu-ray players being out of contention as people are more likely to just use streaming services. I find it more convenient to use my gaming console as a multi-function tool than having to go out my way and purchase a blu-ray player just to watch something. I can understand why Samsung and other major competitors in the markets are removing themselves from the market and it will most likely continue to happen to other companies in the blu-ray market too.