Have we seen the future?

The future appears to be cell phones cannibalizing sales of compacts other than high end and toughs, mirrorless cannibalizing sales of DSLR’s and high end compacts like the RX100 cannibalizing sales of both DSLR’s and mirrorless. Doesn’t leave camera manufacturers a whole lot to sell in volume and with healthy profit margins.
It’s funny, these are the golden days for compacts (RX100), mirrorless (OM-D) and DSLR’s (D600 and D800). Yet their overall audience is diminishing as casual users (i.e., the bulk of purchasers that keep manufacturers afloat) migrate in herds to smartphones. The Nokia 808 is the true future, sure to be copied by Apple, Samsung and HTC.

This mis-calculation of the market is right up there with the original cellphone targeting of the executive market when the reality turned out to be it was women and kids who bought them literally by the millions.  And now risk driving the camera industry out of business, those boring little compacts traditionally forming 75% of their market.

This failure to understand that user interface/connctivity is a primary sales tool for cameras, forming the first impression of a camera with buyers now fully expecting at least equal screen size and connectivity to their smartphone, is assuredly a deal killer for many. Why pay more for an extra device that has a teeny weeny screen compared to what they already have in a highly convenient do-all device that slips into their shirt pocket and comes with easy monthly payments?

The feature camera manufacturers appear blind to is the appeal of larger high quality touch screens, now up to 4.8″ in the hottest selling Samsung and HTC, combined with connectivity. People actually enjoy seeing and sharing what they take images of!

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Sailin' Steve