Mayflower posted a completely different theory that explains why the digital compact camera and the system camera sales are falling dramatically.
They blame the poor usability and lack of customer oriented camera development. In short it’s time for the camera manufacturers to develop a sort of iPhone alike friendly camera. Ok that was veeeery simplified from me 🙂
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Interesting presentation, but I’m not convinced. Why would the absence of a “fun” factor become so detrimental all of a sudden? “Serious” cameras are not perceived as fancy toys, but rather as complex instruments that require some expertise. This is an important ingredient of their appeal, especially in the eyes of new users. Mastering the tools and the workflow are a highly rewarding achievement (personally, I’m a lazy git who shoots JPEG, but I acknowledge belonging to the minority). Yes, customizable file names and on-the-spot selection of favorites would make sense, but their absence is hardly a deal breaker to anyone interested in an advanced camera. The high image quality offered should easily overcome such shortcomings. Ease of use issues are not significant obstacles preventing non-enthusiasts from buying advanced cameras. I think that the good old perceived value / price equation might be of greater importance. There are only so many people who are willing to spend thousands for a camera system and most of them are satisfied by now.
In general, “Image quality” is not widely prioritized by the Western public, let alone by residents of less affluent parts of the world. Most people I know expect a seamless, fully automatic, readily-connected image acquisition process. They don’t want control over technical variables, they don’t require a zooming lens. Moreover, they don’t even want to carry a dedicated camera given other options. Strangely, they don’t blame their “gear” for the occasional poor result. They are well aware of its limitations, but tend to accept them. I believe a hypothetical ‘iCamera’ (a large-sonsor iPhone with interchangeable lenses) would not sell very well because it is not what the wider population is after. It would be too cumbersome. Samsung has tried it and failed.
IMO there is absolutely nothing camera manufacturers can do at the moment to sell more units. In the late nineties (just before digital imaging became popular), global advanced-camera sales were in the magnitude of 5 million a year. I’m afraid those numbers represent the sustainable size of the market even today (population growth and cultural trends are more-or-less cancelled out by the thriving of camera-phones). The photography boom experienced in the past decade was the exception. The novelty has inevitably worn out. Presently the market is on its way back to normality.
“The photography boom experienced in the past decade was the exception. The novelty has inevitably worn out. Presently the market is on its way back to normality.”
It isn’t the novelty that wore off. People are taking more photos today than they did in the late 1990’s early 2000’s. The difference is usability from the entire workflow process, and the fact that most consumers have now used smartphones enough to realize they don’t want to also lug a secondary device around. Hell, camera sales are going back to the age when we only had film cameras. More cameras sold during the digital camera revolution because people saw the benefit and the convenience of a digital camera. Now, with good smartphone cameras, the whole process is made easier and the image quality is likely good enough that most people just don’t want to bother lugging another device or dealing with the photo editing process.
to me the guy is right!
after took one picture the WORK begins: selecting, post processing, sharing, storing etc.
with a smartphone i can share immediately. wlan synchronization is every time an el dorado, sometimes it works, mostly not. so i loose interest in taking pictures without a smartphone.
also i would like to customize my camera by myself, Sony is on a good path with this.
I’ve said all along it’s not the smartphone. That’s an excuse that the marketing departments and lazy photo bloggers use.
Why? Because low end, cheap non-enthusiast cameras have been available since the first Kodak of the 1880s, through the best selling camera model of all time- the Instamatic- to disposable film cameras. Heck, even today the only thing keeping Fuji photo alive is not the X series, but disposable film cameras.
Although certainly some truth to it, it’s not even the post processing workflow so much, as this guy suggests. Why? Because post processing has also ALWAYS been hard- either in darkroom or driving back and forth to your drugstore and waiting some days and paying a lot for prints.
What’s left? Price. The manufacturers are asking way too much for their cameras, even allowing for inflation, compared to what cameras cost at their peak in the 60s and 70s. Who can afford to keep buying what are really nothing more than luxury first world consumer toys? And they are supposed to keep buying it every 18 months when the new model comes out and the manufacturer deliberately made the residual value of the camera they just bought nil. And no one you show your photos to can tell any difference between the last two models and the current one.
This is not sustainable. And neither the manufacturers nor ‘reviewers’ who make money on click-through affiliate sales dare say the ‘too expensive’ words.
This is also relevant for system cameras. Connectivity is a must to increase usage.
Once people discovered that smartphones are good enough, they saw no reason to buy and carry 2 devices.
Build a direct interface to Facebook over a cellular data network into a camera? Right! Everybody wants to sign up for yet another overpriced and poor performing cell plan.
The guys who produced this presentation live on another planet.
>>The guys who produced this presentation live on another planet.
Totally agree … problem is that cameras are too complicated to use ?? Really? If that’s the reason why the point-and-shoot cameras market was the first one to shrink and not the market for the more complicated DSLRs?
The hip young generation is growing up with social media, connectivity and images. The images need be no better than a meg or less. Of course this has taken a big bite out of the lower end camera market and the revenue stream supporting CaNikon and higher end camera development. To claim that there is no connection here is as biased as saying that mobile phones are killing the camera manufacturers.
My guess is that the camera market will drop to below half of what it once was before it rebounds based on the hip young generation wanting to take better pictures of their kids. CaNikon and others will have to learn from Leica how to survive on quality rather than quantity, and all of them will not be able to, or want to, make that adjustment.
In the mid 1980s autofocus gave the camera market a shot in the arm, yet fifteen years later, when digital cameras started to be taken seriously there was another change in the camera market as people started to sell off their film cameras and change to digital. By the mid 2000s photo retailers stopped selling second hand film cameras and would not take digital cameras in part exchange because they where evolving so fast nobody wanted last years model. Then by 2010/11 you start to see photo retailers selling second hand digital cameras because the technology was starting to slow down and people would now buy last years model. By 2013/14 smart-phones produced good enough image quality for none photo enthusiasts, so why buy a compact camera. Now its 2015, there is a very healthy second hand market in DSLRs, CSCs, and lenses. so why buy new. I think this may be partly responsible for the drop in camera sales. I have been a photo enthusiast since the 1970s and most of the enthusiasts I know are not really interested in having wifi built into their cameras and would rather upload images from their computers.
I think that what you say shows the mayflower to be right. You are an “oldschool” photographer, liking the art of photography. You are the small group that likes to know the technology in your camera. Most people are different, the camera must be easy to use, it must have some fun things in them, like art filters and upload to the internet etc. You see that the easy to use Sony Nex cameras became very populair, more populair then the “techy” Fuji, or Olympus cameras. The last cameras are way easy to use for “old school ” camera users as you.
BTW. “oldschool” is not good or bad, it is one group of cutommers. The “new school” group of custommers (the young people, they want other things then the “old school” people.
I used the MF Pentax 6×7 for many years during the film days and then switched to DSLRs ten years ago but today my compact mirrorless 36mp Sony A7r shoots stills better than any of them. I also use my GH4 for 4K video with fast lenses like the 42.5mm F1.2 Leica,Voigtlander Nokton 25mm F0.95 and Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 75 mm f/1.8 ED.
I think DSLRs with mirror box will be a small niche in the future at the rate high quality mirrorless large sensor cameras are coming like the NX1, A7s, A7 II etc.
I think that this person is simplifying the problem a bit. There is an economic crises out there for some years now, there are a lot of smartphones sold with better cameras in them, cameras that are good enough for use on facebook etc. There is some market saturation, as the compact cameras came firs as maingroup digital cameras, they are the first to find the saturation (helped by the smartphone and the economic crises).
But we must see the fun factor too. It is a very true point. Why is there no “Like” button on my camera? Why can’t I use my camera as I use my smartphone, but just get better pictures?