It should not come as a surprise that just like many other kind of gadgets the advanced phones such as the iPhone are also cannibalizing the sales of digital cameras. A new report has surfaced on the web according to which the phones that have a camera sensor of 3-megapixel or above outsold digital cameras with a ratio of 6:1. While isn’t that shocking it is quite interesting indeed.
The digital cameras that store images on some memory chip like a SD card took over the old film cameras in 10 years. Same is true with the phones as they have finally dominated the digital cameras – the task which took them many years if not a full decade. The advent of smartphones has been a real test for digital cameras.
The phone especially smartphones come bundled with literrally thousands of features thanks to the wide range of apps available for iOS as well as Android platforms. On the other hand the sole purpose of equally or mostly more bulky digital camera is to take photos and record videos. Another thing that makes smartphones a better choice other than always having them in pocket and never missing a photo opportunity is the powerful photo editing apps and sharing options available. Nowadays people care less about storing photos on their computer’s harddrive and more about sharing them on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram where they can be seen by hundreds (or even millions).
While more and more people are considering phones with decent picture taking qualities digital cameras still amounted 47% of the total $55.5 billion camera market sales in 2012. Out of $55.5 billion camera phones accounted 25% share.
This trend is similar to what tablets are doing to PCs and are making companies like HP, Dell, and IBM part of history.
In 2016 the overall camera sales are said to rise to $77.8 billion and 30% of that share is expected to be taken by camera phones while digital cameras are said to fall from 47% to 27%.
The trend is similar to what we have seen in the past. The ‘camera’ isn’t going anywhere and will be needed just like it was needed ten years ago but will be available in different shape. Its just like mp3 players which were quite a hit before the release of iPhone and other smartphones but that kind of device went from hot to obsolete when everyone started to have a better audio player with GBs of memory all the time in the pocket.
Source: UnWiredView, EETAsia / Img Credit: ThinkGeek
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