The soaring popularity of smartphones is crushing demand for point-and-shoot 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, while videogame consoles and portable music players also struggle against the all-in-one features offered by the likes of Apple’s iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy.
Just as digital cameras all but destroyed the market for photographic film, the rapid shift to photograph-taking smartphones has torn into a camera sector dominated by Japanese firms including Canon, Olympus, Sony and Nikon.
“We may be seeing the beginning of the collapse of the compact camera market,” said Nobuo Kurahashi, an analyst at Mizuho Investors Securities.
Figures from Japan’s Camera and Imaging Products Association echo the analyst’s grim prediction.
Global shipments of digital cameras among Japanese firms tumbled about 42 percent 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 because of weakness in debt-hit Europe and a Tokyo-Beijing territorial spat that has sparked a consumer boycott of Japanese products in the Chinese market.
However, 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 video game makers such as Nintendo, which has just released its new Wii U game console, 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 said this month. Olympus said its camera business lost money in its fiscal first-half because of the growing popularity of camera-equipped smartphones and a strong yen, which makes Japanese exports less competitive overseas.
Digital camera firms have scaled back their sales targets for the fiscal year to March in a “collapsing” market, said Tetsuya Wadaki, an analyst at Nomura Securities.
“Order volumes at parts suppliers currently appear to be down more than 30 percent year-on-year,” Wadaki said.
Firms are scrambling to keep improving picture quality, offering features such as water-proofing and expanding their Internet features, like allowing users to share pictures through social media networks.
Camera makers say growth areas include emerging economies — where many own neither a camera nor a smartphone — along with replacement demand among compact-camera owners.
The fall-off in demand has not been as stark for the pricier detachable lens cameras favored by avid photographers and growing ranks of camera-buff retirees, particularly in rapidly aging Japan, they say.
Another emerging battleground is for mirrorless cameras, which can be made nearly as small as compact cameras, but with a picture quality that rivals their bulkier counterparts.
Canon insists the market has not been abandoned to smartphones.
“Demand for quality snapshots is there, like taking pictures of your friends’ weddings, an overseas vacation, or your children,” a Canon spokesman said. “We believe there are many people who need compact cameras.”
Mizuho analyst Kurahashi acknowledged that compact cameras “will not disappear.”
“But we see the current trend continuing as image quality in smartphone cameras steadily improves,” he said. “The compact-camera market is going to keep shrinking and it’s difficult to forecast any immediate comeback, or have any optimism.”
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
China is clamping down on fertilizer exports to protect its domestic market, industry sources said, putting an additional strain on global markets that were already grappling with shortages caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. China is among the largest fertilizer exporters — shipping more than US$13 billion of it last year — and it has a history of controlling exports to keep prices low for farmers. Shipments through the war-blocked Strait of Hormuz account for about one-third of the sea-borne supply. This month, Beijing banned exports of nitrogen-potassium fertilizer blends and certain phosphate varieties, sources said. The ban, which has not
AMAZING ABUNDANCE: Elon Musk has announced plans for a new facility in Texas which would manufacture chips for Tesla and SpaceX to use in robotics and AI Elon Musk said his Terafab project — a grand plan to eventually manufacture his own chips for robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and space data centers — would be built in Austin and jointly run by Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX). Musk, the chief executive officer of the two companies, said he would start off with an “advanced technology fab” in Austin that would have all of the equipment necessary to make chips of any kind. The project would call for one day supporting 1 terawatt (TW) of computing power per year, the amount Musk expects the companies to
RSS