Collapse of digital camera sales continued in 2015

[Dante_Stella]

Apple and Samsung are selling 100 million compact camera equivalents a quarter. You can't just dismiss iPhones as belonging to "convenience lovers and snapshooters," a lot of us use them because we like the results we get, and they are fun.

Shh! Don't point out practical realities where it contradicts preordained conclusions of thread posters.

Dante

 

[mani]

This is heading into a futile semantic argument about what constitutes a 'digital camera'.

The worrying aspect of the CIPA figures, is that the dedicated camera market is in precipitous decline, and effectively being hollowed-out from below.

I don't have a crystal ball about what this is actually going to mean in the future, but I very much doubt we are going to continue to see the wide choice of interchangeable lens cameras that we're enjoying at the moment, if the manufacturers keep bleeding sales to the smartphone producers.

And I don't think the enthusiasts on RFF will be satisfied with a smartphone as their only camera in the future, either. But if 95% of the population are content to use the phone in their pocket instead of a dedicated camera, then there really won't be any choice.

 

[jsrockit]

Digital cameras will continue to evolve and mutate. The iPhone won't be around forever either. There will always be something to use for photography... but photography is changing too. Purists may not like what the future holds.

 

[Trius]

I've been impressed with the camera in the iPhone 6s. With some 3rd party apps it's capable but the form factor of the device itself interferes with using it as a "serious" camera for ME.

One of the features that I find useful is the geotagging, which makes it useful as a journal of photographic work with my other cameras.

 

[mani]

Nikon, for instance, was founded on building professional level cameras, which appealed to advanced amateurs.

They became lost in the wilderness of compact cameras, now they have been forced by Apple to return to their roots.

The economic model that prevailed at that time doesn't apply now.

 

[jsrockit]

The new episode of Black Mirror, "White Christmas" offers a future set in a world where people access everything digital through a reality device implanted in their eyes called the "Z-Eye". It is chilling. On Netflix.

I watched it a year or two ago... very good show and a crazy 'Christmas" episode. I might re-watch the whole series since I'm home sick today.

 

[BillBingham2]

....They became lost in the wilderness of compact cameras, now they have been forced by Apple to return to their roots.

It's hard not to get lost when the finance folks say GO THIS WAY and they run most companies these days. It was a fine niche for a couple of years, but has imploded.

I'm hoping that they will stop trying to overburden more serious cameras with all the bells and whistles that they can shove into their programs.

It would be fun to see them bring out a professional level camera in an RF-like-style-size package.

B2 (;->

 

[BillBingham2]

The economic model that prevailed at that time doesn't apply now.

How so?

B2 (;->

 

[BillBingham2]

I think he is referring to the invention of paper money, which some say started during Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907), but actually started during the presidency of Harry S. Truman (1945-1953).

Before that we had to buy cameras with barter?

I was thinking it could the Nixon Shock in 1971 when the US went off the Gold standard. Before that money was actually money......

B2 (;->

 

[ForestCap]

Maybe, the collapse is caused by the fact that most digital cameras released in the past 5 years are good enough (despite all the ranting of sensor size, h-iso perfomance, etc. you see online), so people stopped buying new ones. My last purchase of digital camera body was 3 years ago, and I'm still happy with the camera.

 

[lawrence]

Really young kids are just absolutely not interested in DSLRs anymore.

I mentored a course at one of the creative institutions here in Stockholm last year - of 50 kids around 18-25 years old, 2 were using film cameras, and absolutely all the others used their phones to take pictures.

I got the impression it would be considered uncool to walk around with a big DSLR.

And not just kids. The other day I photographed a book (paper, not e) publisher's editorial team with my D700. One of them commented '...so you're using a real camera!', clearly in the expectation that I would just take a few snaps on an iPhone. Perhaps the quality would have been perfectly adequate but it seems like cheating to do this...and would I really have been seen as a 'photographer'?

 

[JOCO34]

And not just kids. The other day I photographed a book (paper, not e) publisher's editorial team with my D700. One of them commented '...so you're using a real camera!', clearly in the expectation that I would just take a few snaps on an iPhone. Perhaps the quality would have been perfectly adequate but it seems like cheating to do this...and would I really have been seen as a 'photographer'?

No you would be a "Phone-o-grapher! The form factor should not matter to us users who desire prints as a final product. If it goes on electronic media it should not matter where the image originated. Of course for manufactures it does a great deal. In the hey day of Proffessional film photography only pros and dedicated amateurs used high end cameras. Film point and shoots started around the '60's and rapidly started to infiltrate the market. These P&S are now phone cameras. It was the manufactures choice to base their business model on the P&S for profitability. They will adjust, as long as there are people who want to create.

 

[kkcsm]

Question: has the percentage of non point & shoot cameras since, say 1980 been greater than 5% (or even 1%)?

Point and shoot is now a phone (Back when I was a kid it was a Kodak Instamatic).

My kids now are perfectly happy with a camera phone. But what will they do when *they* have kids and like me they want to take pictures of things that can't be done with a point and shoot?

My first real camera was purchased to take pictures of my kids playing soccer (requiring a long lens) and basketball or volleyball (requiring a fast lens). Neither of these things can be shot now or (I think) ever with a point and shoot.

Kids now, always have a camera and are taking a zillion pictures a year. They will become adults. They will have kids. Some percent will want more than a point and shoot. Thus the market for *something* capable will always exist. None of us now knows what that *something* is.

But I doubt the percent today who want somethings more will be different than the percent tomorrow. A greater number of people times a fixed percent will equal a greater number of non-point and shoot cameras.

 

[Scrambler]

What I hate about these figures is the use of digital compact cameras as the base quantity. Who these days carries a digital compact? Well, I own a few, and the kids take them places - Scout camps and the like, where a camera with the capacity to turn off and be easily used trumps something that wants charging every day.

Here's the stuff from the website (http://www.cipa.jp/stats/lens_e.html, and using camera link as well), every 4 (whole) years up to last year:

1999 FP camera 4,236,880 SLR lens 5,647,470
2003 .................2,280,801 ...............4,610,986
2007 DigitalSLR 7,547,295 ILC lens 12,750,668
2011 ...............15,742,039 .............26,265,690
2015 ...............13,058,854 .............21,494,595

If you want to know SLR lenses in the last 3 quoted years: 3.9 million, 5.8 million, 5.7 million.

In short, don't lose sleep yet. Plenty of real cameras out there, plenty being sold, numbers higher than 15 or so years ago.

Can we all get back to discussing our usual spats now?

 

[mani]

What I hate about these figures is the use of digital compact cameras as the base quantity. Who these days carries a digital compact? Well, I own a few, and the kids take them places - Scout camps and the like, where a camera with the capacity to turn off and be easily used trumps something that wants charging every day.

Here's the stuff from the website (http://www.cipa.jp/stats/lens_e.html, and using camera link as well), every 4 (whole) years up to last year:

1999 FP camera 4,236,880 SLR lens 5,647,470
2003 .................2,280,801 ...............4,610,986
2007 DigitalSLR 7,547,295 ILC lens 12,750,668
2011 ...............15,742,039 .............26,265,690
2015 ...............13,058,854 .............21,494,595

If you want to know SLR lenses in the last 3 quoted years: 3.9 million, 5.8 million, 5.7 million.

In short, don't lose sleep yet. Plenty of real cameras out there, plenty being sold, numbers higher than 15 or so years ago.

Can we all get back to discussing our usual spats now?

I think the point is that the P&S cameras have been the 'bread-and-butter' of the industry, and without them they won't have the margins that allow them to continue developing the DSLR lines.

 

[Scrambler]

I think the point is that the P&S cameras have been the 'bread-and-butter' of the industry, and without them they won't have the margins that allow them to continue developing the DSLR lines.

I'll indicate my mystification then. You mean the camera companies haven't invested in smartphones? Or in providing imaging technology to smartphone companies?

In the markets we normally worry about (interchangeable lens cameras) then by the industry standards, the market is stable. I would suggest that in fact the market is expanded compared to the SLR/RF film market of 20-30 years ago.

Look at the numbers.

35 million dedicated cameras last year, 114 million 4 years before, 101 million 4 years before that, 15 (!) million FILM cameras 4 years before that (to be fair, 32 million film cameras 4 years before that).

A BILLION digital cameras over a decade, not counting phones. That's essentially one per family, worldwide. How much more expansion was anyone expecting?

 

[jarski]

this was in DPR yesterday:

Interchangeable lens camera sales steady as Canon profits plunge

http://www.dpreview.com/news/179477...s-camera-sales-steady-as-canon-profits-plunge

not much of a news, but linked as we're discussing it.

 

[jsrockit]

And this...

http://www.fujirumors.com/fujifilm-...ases-profitability-thanks-to-instax-x-series/

 

[Ronald M]

I'm not saying that more manufacturers aren't going to leave the market, but I don't find the sales data surprising. My son just got an iPhone 6S which he has with him 24/7, mainly so he can be in constant text contact with all his school friends, and it takes equally good pictures as the Nikon P&S I bought him a couple years ago. So why have both. The iPhone can take great pictures, but the Nikon P&S can't make phone calls and text. For him, and I think many others, there's no need to have a separate digital camera.

Also keep in mind, in 2003, and back in the film camera era, there were no cell phones that could take such high quality images.[/QUOTE

I keep asking for Nikon to put phones in the camera.

They they choose to loose sales.

 

[mani]

And this...

http://www.fujirumors.com/fujifilm-...ases-profitability-thanks-to-instax-x-series/

So sales of Instax were up, while "sales volume largely decreased due to the contraction of the product lineup of compact digital cameras..." 😀

Well Fuji had a neat graph showing everyone else's digital sales were crashing while their's were increasing:

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/.a/6a00df351e888f883401b7c80811bf970b-popup

but I never really know what to believe when companies start throwing around statistics and terms like "strong" sales.

But Instax sales "increased". So that's nice to hear. 🙂