Global shipments of digital still cameras will fall 12.5 percent this year due to the popularization of smartphone cameras and the economic downturn, Digitimes Research predicted yesterday.
According to the research firm, the low and middle-end digital camera market is being squeezed by smartphone cameras, with consumers increasingly relying on their phones to snap pictures.
Digitimes Research predicted 106 million low and middle-end digital cameras would be shipped worldwide this year, down 12.5 percent from last year.
The research firm also expected Canon Inc to become the world’s biggest digital camera vendor this year, with shipments expected to surpass those of current global leader Sony Corp.
Sony’s shipments are expected to fall 15 percent from a year earlier to fewer than 18 million units, while Canon’s shipments should edge lower by only 1 percent.
Nikon Corp, the only digital camera maker expected to see positive shipment growth this year, is forecast to snatch the No. 3 spot from South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co, the research firm said.
Meanwhile, shipments from Taiwan-based digital camera makers such as Canon Inc Taiwan and Altek Corp (華晶科), who make cameras mainly for Sony and Samsung, are expected to drop 21 percent from a year earlier on declining sales and the exit of Kodak from the consumer photography market.
Those weaker sales may push the global market share for Taiwanese digital camera makers down to 41 percent this year, according to Digitimes Research.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by