http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/were-taking-more-pictures-ever-so-why-are-cameras-dying-6C10607491
You would think that in a world where hundreds of thousands of photos are shared every minute, camera makers would be absolutely in heaven. Instead, they're struggling to maintain both their income and their relevance.The same week that Nokia introduced the Lumia 1020 — a smartphone with a built-in 41-megapixel camera — the president of Nikon, Makoto Kimura, said in an interview with Bloomberg that the company might have to "change the concept of cameras" in order to survive. Just a few years ago, camera-phones were junk and digital cameras were a hot ticket. How did we get here?
Photography was originally an expensive game to play, with the cost of film and development making your camera into a money sink. And unless you were among the few shutterbug elites with really nice gear, all you and your little plastic automatic (or even disposable) camera were likely producing was a shoebox full of poorly exposed, red-eye rampant 3x5s.
Then came digital — we take it for granted now, but it was a real breath of fresh air when it arrived. The early 2000s brought the first really usable digital cameras to consumers: chunky little 2-megapixel things whose quality was nothing to write home about, but which brought instant picture taking to the masses. No film, no processing ... no shoeboxes.
Over the next few years, the technology improved, and "real" photography arrived in digital form, with DSLRs like Canon's Digital Rebel.For almost a decade, digital camera sales mounted as people ditched their old pocket 35mm cameras for digital cameras of all shapes and sizes, with shipments peaking at 120 million in 2008. Then growth stalled.
It's tempting to blame the iPhone, which is rightfully credited with shaking the foundations of several other industries at the time. Other phones had cameras, but nothing that could rival a point-and-shoot. And the roomy LCD screen that covered the iPhone's surface made one heck of a futuristic interface for snapping shots.
But early on, the iPhone's camera wasn't great, and there weren't yet apps for picture sharing. Smartphones would eventually be the main reason cameras were hurting, but they got their toehold because of something altogether different: the global recession.
CIPA, an organization that tracks camera sales, blames the economy in this analysis and sales forecast (PDF). Tight wallets meant $500 for a camera was out of the question — but $100 for a smartphone on contract, perhaps in lieu of a new laptop, was a bargain. Besides, nearly everyone already owned a digital camera (well over a billion had been sold at this point), and the constantly increasing megapixels were not enough of a draw to increase demand.
These consumer trends — combined with the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan, affecting camera makers' production lines — caused the photo industry to withdraw into a sort of stasis, from which, sales-wise at least, it has never emerged.
More text, graphs and pictures at the URL above.
You would think that in a world where hundreds of thousands of photos are shared every minute, camera makers would be absolutely in heaven. Instead, they're struggling to maintain both their income and their relevance.The same week that Nokia introduced the Lumia 1020 — a smartphone with a built-in 41-megapixel camera — the president of Nikon, Makoto Kimura, said in an interview with Bloomberg that the company might have to "change the concept of cameras" in order to survive. Just a few years ago, camera-phones were junk and digital cameras were a hot ticket. How did we get here?
Photography was originally an expensive game to play, with the cost of film and development making your camera into a money sink. And unless you were among the few shutterbug elites with really nice gear, all you and your little plastic automatic (or even disposable) camera were likely producing was a shoebox full of poorly exposed, red-eye rampant 3x5s.
Then came digital — we take it for granted now, but it was a real breath of fresh air when it arrived. The early 2000s brought the first really usable digital cameras to consumers: chunky little 2-megapixel things whose quality was nothing to write home about, but which brought instant picture taking to the masses. No film, no processing ... no shoeboxes.
Over the next few years, the technology improved, and "real" photography arrived in digital form, with DSLRs like Canon's Digital Rebel.For almost a decade, digital camera sales mounted as people ditched their old pocket 35mm cameras for digital cameras of all shapes and sizes, with shipments peaking at 120 million in 2008. Then growth stalled.
It's tempting to blame the iPhone, which is rightfully credited with shaking the foundations of several other industries at the time. Other phones had cameras, but nothing that could rival a point-and-shoot. And the roomy LCD screen that covered the iPhone's surface made one heck of a futuristic interface for snapping shots.
But early on, the iPhone's camera wasn't great, and there weren't yet apps for picture sharing. Smartphones would eventually be the main reason cameras were hurting, but they got their toehold because of something altogether different: the global recession.
CIPA, an organization that tracks camera sales, blames the economy in this analysis and sales forecast (PDF). Tight wallets meant $500 for a camera was out of the question — but $100 for a smartphone on contract, perhaps in lieu of a new laptop, was a bargain. Besides, nearly everyone already owned a digital camera (well over a billion had been sold at this point), and the constantly increasing megapixels were not enough of a draw to increase demand.
These consumer trends — combined with the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan, affecting camera makers' production lines — caused the photo industry to withdraw into a sort of stasis, from which, sales-wise at least, it has never emerged.
More text, graphs and pictures at the URL above.
