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Smartphones
crushing the point-and-shoot camera?
The
soaring popularity of smartphones is crushing the demand for point-andshoot
cameras, threatening the once-vibrant sector as firms scramble to hit back
with web-friendly features and boost quality, analysts say.
A sharp drop in sales of digital compact cameras
marks them as the latest casualty of smartphones as videogame consoles and
portable music players also struggle against the all-in-one features
offered by the some of the newest models out.
Just as digital cameras all but destroyed the
market for photographic film, the rapid shift to picture-taking smartphones
has torn into a camera sector dominated by Japanese firms.
“We may be seeing the beginning of the collapse of
the compact camera market,” said Nobuo Kurahashi, analyst at Mizuho
Investors Securities.
Global shipments of digital cameras among Japanese firms
tumbled about 42% in September from a year ago to 7.58 million units, with
compact offerings falling 48 percent, according to the Association.
Higher-end cameras with detachable lenses fell a
more modest 7.4 percent in that time, it said.
Part of the decline was due to weakness in debthit
Europe and a Tokyo-Beijing territorial spat that has sparked a consumer
boycott of Japanbrand products in the China market.
But smartphones have proved a mighty rival to
point-and-shoot cameras, analysts say, offering an all-in-one phone,
computer and camera with comparatively high quality pictures and Internet
photo downloading.
Those features have also dug into videogame makers,
as smartphone owners increasingly download free online games or store music
on the devices instead of using standalone MP3 players.
“The market for compact digital cameras shrank at a
faster speed and scale than we had imagined as smartphones with camera
functions spread around the world,” Olympus president Hiroyuki Sasa told a
news briefing this month.
For convenience’ sake, people
will, for example, most likely whip out their cellphones to take a
self-portrait, rather than carry a second camera
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