Digital cameras predicted to be the next casualty of smartphones and iPads
Sales of smartphones in the model of Apple's iPhone have deeply encroached upon single purpose electronics sales ranging from handheld games to music players to GPS units. Digital cameras are expected to fall next.
According to market research firm IHS iSuppli, sales of smartphones and tablets will continue to outpace single purpose devices, and as noted in a report by MarketWatch, "shipments of digital cameras and the like will start to fall."
IHS iSuppli predicts that smartphones will continue to grow at a compounded annual rate of 28.5 percent through 2015. Apple's iPhone has become the top seller among smartphones, and Apple itself has recently become the top manufacturer, edging out Samsung in the latest quarter in the race to steal Nokia's crown.
Smartphones have eaten up sales of everything from standalone music players (Apple's sales of iPods flattened out in the US and have started to decline) to dedicated gaming devices (sending Sony and Nintendo scrambling) to single purpose video cameras (like Cisco's Flip), to basic feature phones themselves.
It's not just general purpose smartphones that are threatening single purpose consumer devices. Tablet systems, which the report acknowledges are "dominated by Apple's iPad," are similarly growing at the expense of other devices, and at an even faster pace than smartphones.
IHS iSuppli predicts that tablets will grow at a compounded annual rate of 72.1 percent until 2015, more than 2.5 times as fast as smartphones.
?The success of multipurpose electronic equipment, often coming at the expense of devices dedicated to a single task, is reshaping the landscape of the consumer electronics industry,? wrote IHS analyst Jordan Selburn.
Selburn said tablets are ?truly a jack of all trades ? and master of most,? destined to gobble up sales of dedicated e-book readers, music and video players, calendars, alarm clocks, video gaming devices, GPS and consumer digital cameras.
Apple's iPhone 4, which packs a high quality smartphone camera, has already become a top camera among Flickr users and has impressive video editing features that make it a strong competitor to stand alone video capture devices, such as the Flip camera purchased and promoted by Cisco for just a year before it was discontinued as a product.
On the other hand, Apple's tablet devices, ranging from the iPad to the iPod touch, both incorporate much lower quality cameras primarily suitable just for FaceTime video conferencing, making them less of a threat to standalone camera devices.
According to market research firm IHS iSuppli, sales of smartphones and tablets will continue to outpace single purpose devices, and as noted in a report by MarketWatch, "shipments of digital cameras and the like will start to fall."
IHS iSuppli predicts that smartphones will continue to grow at a compounded annual rate of 28.5 percent through 2015. Apple's iPhone has become the top seller among smartphones, and Apple itself has recently become the top manufacturer, edging out Samsung in the latest quarter in the race to steal Nokia's crown.
Smartphones have eaten up sales of everything from standalone music players (Apple's sales of iPods flattened out in the US and have started to decline) to dedicated gaming devices (sending Sony and Nintendo scrambling) to single purpose video cameras (like Cisco's Flip), to basic feature phones themselves.
It's not just general purpose smartphones that are threatening single purpose consumer devices. Tablet systems, which the report acknowledges are "dominated by Apple's iPad," are similarly growing at the expense of other devices, and at an even faster pace than smartphones.
IHS iSuppli predicts that tablets will grow at a compounded annual rate of 72.1 percent until 2015, more than 2.5 times as fast as smartphones.
?The success of multipurpose electronic equipment, often coming at the expense of devices dedicated to a single task, is reshaping the landscape of the consumer electronics industry,? wrote IHS analyst Jordan Selburn.
Selburn said tablets are ?truly a jack of all trades ? and master of most,? destined to gobble up sales of dedicated e-book readers, music and video players, calendars, alarm clocks, video gaming devices, GPS and consumer digital cameras.
Apple's iPhone 4, which packs a high quality smartphone camera, has already become a top camera among Flickr users and has impressive video editing features that make it a strong competitor to stand alone video capture devices, such as the Flip camera purchased and promoted by Cisco for just a year before it was discontinued as a product.
On the other hand, Apple's tablet devices, ranging from the iPad to the iPod touch, both incorporate much lower quality cameras primarily suitable just for FaceTime video conferencing, making them less of a threat to standalone camera devices.
Comments
Because no smartphone can ever compare to a proper camera.
You mean point and shoots, right?
Because no smartphone can ever compare to a proper camera.
I agree!
You mean point and shoots, right?
Because no smartphone can ever compare to a proper camera.
It depends. If you look at Flickr's upload rates it shows the iPhone as recently beat out every other camera. I bet if you look at Facebook and Twitter, which have direct access to the camera HW in app phones you'll have even a greater percentage of photos for those sites taken from phones than from professional cameras. This doesn't imply that there is no professional camera market or that it's shrinking ? in fact it could be growing ? it just means that the most commonly used cameras are moving from single-function devices to multifunction devices.
My guess is that pretty much everything that is not a DSLR will start to go away, and DSLRs themselves will continue to get cheaper. In a few years the camera section at BestBuy will be a range of DSLRs, the cheapest of which will be under $300 with a kit lens, and a handful of very inexpensive smaller imager devices (well under $100) with long zoom ranges favoring the telephoto that will be sold expressly as "get the vacation shot from far away" problem solvers.
It's hard to draw a hard and fast line as to what constitutes the "point and shoot" market, however. For years manufacturers have been industriously adding pixels and options to their cheaper digicams, just because they could.
My guess is that pretty much everything that is not a DSLR will start to go away, and DSLRs themselves will continue to get cheaper. In a few years the camera section at BestBuy will be a range of DSLRs with a handful of very inexpensive smaller imager devices with long zoom lenses that will be sold expressly as "get the vacation shot from far away" problem solvers.
Lens physics will not allow an optical zoom lens in a thin phone like the iPhone. So unless consumers decide a zoom lens isn't important to them at all, point and shoots aren't going anywhere. If a camera manufactuer came out with a sub 300 point and shoot with no zoom it would not sell at all(there are expensive compact with no zoom because they have a APS-C sensor). Cameras and phone cameras will be complimentary. DSLRs are slowly being replaced by mirrorless cameras like the Sony NEX and mico 4/3 cameras. They aren't quite there yet, but they are getting better every year.
Even the pocketable Canon S95 is only pulled out for trips, parties, and special event snapshot taking.
When you always have a camera on your person (and always have a way to immediately share it), "photography" changes from being a series of considered compositions for which you might want the best possible quality to more of a kind of ongoing image diary activity. Nobody cares if all those endless "here's my boyfriend in his new stupid shirt" pictures on Facebook are composed or lit or anything, because that's not what they're for.
It's not bad photography, it's good sharing, more akin to visual talking than what we've previously considered camera "for."
Doesn't mean that there won't still be beautiful picture taken by people who set out to do that, but I don't think you can compare the ubiquitous upload stream to traditional photography, since they serve distinctly different purposes.
Maybe there is a market for a camera with a simple phone built-in -- just enough functions to make & receive calls via a bluetooth controller.
So unless consumers decide a zoom lens isn't important to them at all, point and shoots aren't going anywhere.
It's not that it's not important, it's whether or not you're willing to carry yet another device. As I said above, The family S95 and G11 are only pulled out for special occassions.
You can be "complementary", and still be in a declining market. Full-up GPS systems are "complementary". Full-up video cameras are "complementary". Full-up game systems are "complementary".
But they're being replaced for day to day use, nonetheless.
And as megapixel counts go up (we're around 8MP, currently), cropping and digital zoom help alleviate some of that missing functionality.
Even if somehow you get the performance of a good point and shoot--not possible today, how many consumers want a camera with no zoom? Even a small zoom will require a lot of thickness. People take a lot of phone camera pictures because it is with them all the time, but when you travel,for example, your phone camera isn't going to be good enough. In other words, cameras in phones are complimentary not a replacement for a camera.
Hmmmm... as camera phones get better then you can see more and more people leaving their single purpose cameras at home.
Anecdotally speaking... I know several people who travel constantly and they couldn't be bothered with a separate camera. The ease with which they are able to email their photos to friends and to be able to send their photos to FB makes it so they no longer want the added weight... and nuisance.
This might in fact be true for budget compact cameras, because the majority of photos on social sites are crappy, badly lit and overly noisy snap shots anyway - and those folks don't mind
The worst shots from a phone camera are still better the best shots from the 127s and 110s built in the 60s and 70s.
Lens physics will not allow an optical zoom lens in a thin phone like the iPhone. So unless consumers decide a zoom lens isn't important to them at all, point and shoots aren't going anywhere. If a camera manufactuer came out with a sub 300 point and shoot with no zoom it would not sell at all(there are expensive compact with no zoom because they have a APS-C sensor). Cameras and phone cameras will be complimentary. DSLRs are slowly being replaced by mirrorless cameras like the Sony NEX and mico 4/3 cameras. They aren't quite there yet, but they are getting better every year.
That's what I'm saying-- that zoom lenses will be the selling point of cheap point and shoots, since you can use your camera phone for everything else.
I think the very process we're discussing dooms micro 4/3 to niche status, because ever better cell cameras kill the middle. A phone can do most of what most people want to do most of the time, and if you want to do more why not just get a full on DSLR? I can't imagine the market for "want to take better pictures than my phone, although not the best pictures possible, while carrying a device not nearly as small as my phone, although somewhat smaller than a DSLR" is very large.
That's what I'm saying-- that zoom lenses will be the selling point of cheap point and shoots, since you can use your camera phone for everything else.
The problem is that if not enough people find that sufficient reason then cheap point & shoot loses economy of scale and becomes too expensive. It's quite easy to envisage the camera market consisting of smartphones on one hand and then prosumer and up on the other.
The ease with which they are able to email their photos to friends and to be able to send their photos to FB...
Yeah, the camera companies missed the boat on this one.
Also look at how smartphone apps let you do a million or so special effects (shooting modes), editing, and more.
A phone's optics offen leave much to be desired, but its high-res touch screen, high-speed processor (compared to a camera), and 3G/WiFi connectivity make up for an awful lot.
I can't imagine the market for "want to take better pictures than my phone, although not the best pictures possible, while carrying a device not nearly as small as my phone, although somewhat smaller than a DSLR" is very large.
Depends, depends, depends. I dug out my Canon 1Ds and 70-200 f/2.8 IS for a special event last weekend... and I'd forgotten just how big, heavy, and clunky the thing actually is. Especially packing the 28-70 and 16-35 to go with...
I could, in fact, see the Micro 4/3 and APS-C sensors in a prosumer P&S "stealing" the market from the DSLRs, especially as their low-light quality improves. Studios are using 6x4.5 30MP and up medium format anyway.
So, camera phones, APS-C, DSLR, and MF. Seems like that covers all the bases.