Just one day after Toshiba posted some promising numbers for HD DVD adoption, they have announced that they expect their sales to be 44% less than they expected earlier in the year. That's some disappointing news, especially since this is the week Toshiba plans to offer a $100 discount on HD DVD players. Will the price cuts not be enough to lure customers in to buying? They are dropping their estimate by 800,000 units, no small change:

The company announced that it lowered its North American sales forecasts for calendar year 2007 from 1.8 million units to 1 million units – a decrease of 44 percent. The adjustment for the North American market will also affect global sales forecasts, but no estimate was given by Yoshihide Fujii, Toshiba's head of consumer electronics. "Obviously we are going to have to lower our previous global estimate."
Then again, going conservative on your sales estimates might be beneficial, especially for early adoption. One area HD DVD is clearly winning in is price, which is perhaps the biggest selling point of all. Even a million units would be a huge increase over what is currently available, however, so Toshiba obviously expects adoption to increase exponentially this year.