Digital camera market is collapsing

[Skiff]

Total nonsense.

2014 sales of DSLRs were still above 65 million units.

LOL, 65 million???

2014 sales of DSLRs were in reality less than 1/6 of that:
10.5 million units.

Look here:
http://www.cipa.jp/stats/dc_e.html
http://www.cipa.jp/stats/documents/e/d-2014_e.pdf

Mirrorless adds another 18 million.

LOL, 18 milion????

2014 sales were 3.2 million units in reality.

Look here:
http://www.cipa.jp/stats/dc_e.html
http://www.cipa.jp/stats/documents/e/d-2014_e.pdf

I've given these links at the official CIPA data again and again in this thread, others did it too.
So everyone had the chance to inform himself and to get the real numbers of the industry.

Why are you lying at other forum members?
Why are you posting here complete phantasy numbers which have nothing at all to do with the reality?
Or are you just unable to read even the most simple statistic?

Sorry, but with such a behaviour no one here can take you serious anymore.

 

[noisycheese]

Word is, they still use actual cameras at National Geographic - full frame, even - not iPhones... 😀

 

[RattyMouse]

LOL, 65 million???

2014 sales of DSLRs were in reality less than 1/6 of that:
10.5 million units.

Look here:
http://www.cipa.jp/stats/dc_e.html
http://www.cipa.jp/stats/documents/e/d-2014_e.pdf



LOL, 18 milion????

2014 sales were 3.2 million units in reality.

Look here:
http://www.cipa.jp/stats/dc_e.html
http://www.cipa.jp/stats/documents/e/d-2014_e.pdf

I've given these links at the official CIPA data again and again in this thread, others did it too.
So everyone had the chance to inform himself and to get the real numbers of the industry.

Why are you lying at other forum members?
Why are you posting here complete phantasy numbers which have nothing at all to do with the reality?
Or are you just unable to read even the most simple statistic?

Sorry, but with such a behaviour no one here can take you serious anymore.

Your numbers are completely correct and it is clear as day that the digital camera industry is STILL in free fall. I can't believe I just read earlier in this thread that some here think that market will GROW in 2-4 years. That is abject nonsense. We have seen a catastrophic decline in camera sales (if smart phones are excluded) for now 5 years.

It takes exceptionally strong powers to ignore evidence such as this.

 

[jsrockit]

http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/sony-announces-best-quarterly-profit-in-7-years/

 

[Pioneer]

Imagine that, a Japanese conglomerate is making money. I guess the end of the world will have to wait until next year. 😀

Back to making, developing, scanning and printing photographs...

 

[easyrider]

A lot of my younger friends use the iPhone for photos. At a recent basketball game at my grandson's school, a significant number of parents were capturing it on their iPads!
What worries me more than the method of capture, is that very few make prints. When the device dies, the pix die too. Will there be family photos going into the next generations?

 

[sc_rufctr]

Well what Industry has not been hard hit from this dreadful World Economy
Only the fat cats on Wall Street and the mega Corps are prospering
So much for Globilization, it ruined the World as far as I'm concerned

As for Digital cameras the market seems flooded with possibilities...
There are only so many cameras you can use and own


Oops I may get in trouble now for being too Political....Apologies. :angel:
Mods can delete my Post if you feel its inappropriate

Excellent post. The world economy is nothing but a scam. There is nothing level or fair about it.
Politics aside. I think a lot of people (as in billions) have become disadvantaged because of it.

-------------------------------------

So the big makers are finding it tough but I'm sure they'll adapt.

I expect we'll be seeing a Lecia Smartphone soon enough. 🙄

 

[Pioneer]

Excellent post. The world economy is nothing but a scam. There is nothing level or fair about it.
Politics aside. I think a lot of people (as in billions) have become disadvantaged because of it.

-------------------------------------

So the big makers are finding it tough but I'm sure they'll adapt.

I expect we'll be seeing a Lecia Smartphone soon enough. 🙄

Financial collapses are tough on everyone, no matter when they hit. Read about the 1873 or 1893 collapses. The news from those days sounds remarkably similar to the news we see today. In every collapse the wealthy are blamed as it is this time.

So far this time around the wealthy have actually survived very well as governments try to prop up the current financial systems and stop the reset that always follows excessive debt. Unfortunately this only stretches things out and it will all unravel eventually.

I think the issues with digital photography are being caused by different problems than our current economic malaise. It certainly isn't helping but the real problems in the digital world are different.

The expansion of photography from a rich man's hobby to the masses has always been a story of simplicity. We went from daguerreotypes and wet plates to dry plates and film. Then from large bulky cameras to the Brownie. That turned into 35mm film in its own small, self-contained cartridge. The trend continues today as we move from complex, feature-laden, digital SLRs to phone cameras.

Most of digital photography is still caught up in the old 35mm camera manufacturing system. This trend will continue. The real winners will be Sony (chips), Samsung, Apple, and companies we haven't really heard of yet. Companies that were never a part of the old paradigm so they won't be trapped by it like Canon, Nikon and the rest. One of the companies that I think will be a winner is Fuji. They still have some tradition and products in the film world but they are also firmly in the digital world as well. The Fujica Instax is a great example of melding the best of the old world with the new.

 

[Dante_Stella]

I think the major problem with digital photography is a smaller version of what happened to home darkrooms in film photography: the middle class has no leisure time, for any hobby, and this cuts everything down to the minimum. Here, that minimum happens to be the $400 smartphones that employers increasingly expect their workers to buy on their own dime.

The discussion of what happened to Radio Shack is instructive.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/radioshack-suffered-as-free-time-evaporated-1423441817

Dante

 

[Hunter S Thompson]

I think the major problem with digital photography is a smaller version of what happened to home darkrooms in film photography: the middle class has no leisure time, for any hobby, and this cuts everything down to the minimum. Here, that minimum happens to be the $400 smartphones that employers increasingly expect their workers to buy on their own dime.

The discussion of what happened to Radio Shack is instructive.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/radioshack-suffered-as-free-time-evaporated-1423441817

Dante

Middle class has no time?? More photos now are taken than ever in all of history. Flickr has something like 10,000 photos uploaded to the site every single minute! I'm sure facebook and instantagram are the same.

Photography is doing just fine. The digital camera makers are losing money, lots and lots of money, because the vast majority of people prefer to use smart phones to take digital photos.

Sales of digital camera are in and have been in free fall for years now.

 

[jarski]

I recently bought two new mirrorless Sony's for my travels. If sky is indeed falling, that isn't because of me! 😀

 

[sc_rufctr]

Locally Sony are running an ad campaign on TV... They're bragging about having done away with the mirror.
They rarely advertise their cameras this way. I guess they're feeling the pinch.

 

[Hunter S Thompson]

Locally Sony are running an ad campaign on TV... They're bragging about having done away with the mirror.
They rarely advertise their cameras this way. I guess they're feeling the pinch.

That's hilarious. Like the average consumer cares about a mirror.

What a moronic ad.

 

[AZPhotog]

Canon and Nikon are mainly responsible for the woes of the film industry as it stands currently ... and they will continue to effect it surely, along with a lot of other manufacturers.

I agree with Keith.

Personally, it would be pleasant (for me anyway) not to constantly have the annoying and inevitable "Camera of the Month" being introduced . . .

I use my D700 and D300s rarely, do not care much for autofocus (which is usually NOT where I want it,) and pretty much enjoy controlling depth of field and manual focus manually with my M3's, FM3A, F2AS and all the old Canon A-series and EF cameras that I have accumulated over a lifetime.

The more I used my digital's, the more it eventually encouraged me to fall back to manual film cameras. But that is just my personal preference. As I do not photograph sports / race cars / running children, I have little use for any sort of autofocus anyway.

 

[noisycheese]

You're one of the so-called "enthusiasts," but there simply are not enough of us to support the industry long-term. I know two or three other people who take photography seriously enough to spring for today's camera prices. For the rest it's smartphones. And they will just keep getting better.

Not a good time to be a camera OEM. Maybe Leica's luxury branding will turn out to be among the smartest business models.

John

DSLR makers may be running scared from the dreaded smartphone - but professional shooters will always buy 24x36mm full frame or medium format digital cameras.

Smartphones may well equal the IQ of entry to mid-level DSLRs, but I seriously doubt that we will ever see photographers at NFL games using smartphones. Vogue covers shot with smartphones? Nope. National Geographic photographers on assignment with smartphones? Nope. Not in our lifetimes, anyway.

The inescapable truth is this: Sometimes a guy/gal has got to have a serious camera with a serious sensor and a serious lens.

 

[BrooklyNYC]

Part of the reason for the decline in digital camera sales has to do with "value" for your dollar. The images that you can capture in a new $1000 digital camera are amazing, but how much more amazing are they than the $1000 camera you purchased two years ago. If you placed that $1000 digital camera you purchased two years ago on eBay, how much is it worth today. If you payed $1000 on a film camera, you can keep it and pass it down to your kids, and the technology will be as current as it is today.

Maybe the industry shouldn't have tried so hard to kill film photography. If Nikon still produced film cameras, some small, some rangefinders, etc, people might still but them knowing that they won't be obsolete in a year or two. If canon sold a new film rangefinder, people might still buy them. Even the electronics and sensors of digital cameras were upgradable, people might not mind paying thousands of dollars for a solid digital camera.

Film cameras that were made out of good materials would last decades. Many digital cameras feel cheap even though the prices aren't cheap. There are a handful of solidly built digital cameras, and serious photographers don't mind paying money if they see the value in the product. If the major manufacturers try to continue on the retro path with timeless designs and quality materials, there might be hope for the digital future.

 

[moreorless]

Film was always going to die as a mainstream medium when digital emerged, nothing could be done to stop that.

The big difference with digital of course is that theres no cost per image with film and processing which means people are willing to spend a lot more on cameras than they were.

The decline is IMHO a combination of cheaper compacts being overtaken by phone cameras(again inevitable) and the "serious" camera market both reaching saturation and slowing down in terms of advances. In the 00's sensor tech was advancing very rapidly and buying a new larger sensor camera 2-3 years after your old one could often give large benefits in terms of noise performance and resolution. These days the noise performance of most sensor sizes hasn't really changed much in the last 5 years and whilst resolution is still increasing its now move beyond a lot of peoples needs.

Really though I think a lot of the market analysis we see is very simplistic, lumping together all digital camera sales for example when in reality a company probably makes vastly more per unit selling a high end FF DSLR compared to a basic compact. Generally I think were seeing a market correction with the camera business moving back to the higher end sales that drove it during the film era.

 

[Wexford]

At some point the market will be saturated with cameras. With smartphone cameras gaining on DSLR in terms of resolution the average person won't spend the money.

I have a niece who said she'd decline a gift of a standalone camera because she likes what she has on her iPhone. Her generation, she's 22, has little desire for a traditional camera. My niece and others like her are too self involved to step outside their world.

 

[jarski]

Her generation, she's 22, has little desire for a traditional camera.

am not sure can I agree, its not generation thing. usually dedicated camera comes into picture person has real motivation todo photography. camera in smartphone is kind of side benefit. people would buy them even if it didn't have a camera.

 

[Pioneer]

The smartphone has combined several features into a whole that works together. The phone, texting, surfing the internet, taking and sharing images of where you are and what you're doing. The photography part has finally become just one more method of communication, as it always has been.

And along the way it is changing the face of the camera market. It is the epitome of the disruptive technology. There will still be cameras, but the entire industry will contract. I am really not sure that the digital camera was ever really destined to look like the film camera before it. It was just a transition phase on the way to being something else.