The P&S camera market is dead.

"I think the digital still camera market has finally got hammered by the smartphone market where people aren't buying digital still cameras, they're buying smartphones with the cameras built in."

http://www.morningstar.com/earnings/47626129-molex-molx-q2-2013.aspx?qindex=2

Maybe the camera makers will now concentrate on cameras for the enthusiast instead of the masses.

My wife had a pretty decent point and shoot... it sits gathering dust since she bought an iPhone.

--
Jim Radcliffe
http://www.boxedlight.com
The ability to 'see' the shot is more important than the gear used to capture it.

This morning I had to shoot in tough conditions with my P&S.  I had my Galaxy S3 with me, but never used it for a single shot.  It would have been incapable of shooting in the conditions present and getting the shots I wanted to get.

--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)

I hear food is going out of fashion too!

It's a bit disingenuous since smartphones essentially created their own market.  If the industry was hoping to somehow "graduate" phone users to completely different, expensive devices that take only marginally better photos and that are harder to interface with the likes of email, Facebook and other web applications ... they were smoking something.  I think the core market for better-than-phone quality point & shoots is still there (vacationers, young families, grandparents, etc), it's just not growing the same way the smartphone market is growing.

--
Mike

smartphones beat p&s in the same way the uFT beats FF.  only in the head of some individuals.  until smart phones come with buttons and some way to hold them without shaking, they don't compare to anything.  they are their own market.  fine in that facebook/instagram kind of way.  not so fine in others.

The problem I'd say is that alot of the P&S market was made up of users who didnt really even need the full functionality of those cameras, the option of dumping them for a single device is clearly someting many have taken.

That said I do think theres also been a clear shift in the market P&S appeals to, 10 years ago there were really very few cheap options for larger digital sensors so many people who might have preffer one on a DSLR had to use them.

True - by being smaller, cheaper, more convenient and good enough.

In denial.

Beating a product technology-wise is not the same as beating a product market-wise. Betamax beat VHS but VHS won.

Guess I'll just have to enjoy it while it lasts, then. Though, much like it happened with PDAs(*), I suspect they'll eventually come back in some form or another.

(*) If you're curious about what happened... well, someone added a mic and an antenna in there, and started calling them "smartphones".

--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/draek
http://500px.com/draek

They are not saying the market is not growing fast enough. They are saying the core market for P&S cameras is deteriorating. That's the point of the CEO of Molex's statement. If anyone, he knows since Molex is the company that makes the connectors that go into things like cameras. He can tell by the orders he's getting. It's backed up by the sales numbers for P&S cameras. If I heard right, the number quoted on CNBC this morning was that it was down 30% or so this last holiday season. Not less growth, but actual decline in sales. Here's some other numbers backing that up.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2013/01/02/2003551537

http://www.petapixel.com/2012/10/25/camera-sales-falling-around-the-world-as-smartphoneography-erodes-demand/

That's why camera manufacturers like Panasonic are trying to sell off their P&S camera units.

P&S were high volume sellers whose R&D and NRE costs were likely shared with other product lines like DSLRs. This is especially true for camera makers that are vertically integrated with their own FABs, like Canon. Will be interesting to see how this affects future R&D.

Of course the P&S is dead, killed by the cell phone cam. For the most part, people bought P&S's for the convenience, not photographic excellence. And the cell phone cam is so much more convenient: always with you, takes up no more room than the phone already requires, photos aren't too bad, screen is larger, and you can send the photos immediately to other people.

Doesn't mean the cell phone cam is better from an image quality perspective... even as of today, it's not. It just means that the P&S market was driven primarily by convenience, until something more convenient came along.

I have to agree that the $129 P&S market (turn dial to green AUTO and press shutter) is going away but the newer "pocketable" enthusiast cameras will do fine. The 1" sensor Sony RX100 being a prime example. But these pocketable enthusiast cameras will displace larger cameras not cell phones. I have purchased my last "larger" camera.
my 0.02
Bert

...not long ago in this very forum:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/post/50555895

Of course, as the OP of that thread noted upthread, just 'cause compacts have superior IQ doesn't mean that they aren't hurting due to cellphone cameras being "good enough".

Below is what I said in the link Great Bustard was referring to:

So with everyone getting all manners of phones, and some suggesting that phones could replace DSLR's, you can imagine my excitement when I got my HTC One S, wanting to try out the camera; the sales rep told me it could replace my non-phone cameras.

The first hint of less than great has been the pics I have received from family and friends taken with their phones, Ipads or what have you (non-cameras). I have to say in all of my life, looking at tens of thousands of crappy photographs taken by non-photography types over my lifetime, never has the quality of pictures been as bad as I see today. I'm taking about technical quality not the photographer's creative eye.

In fact I think we are into a new golden age of totally crappy photographs. Its seems no matter how blurred, pixelated, noisy, out of focus grunge that results from these new non-camera camera's, they're sent on to friends, relatives, acquaintances and enemies. My wife sent me a picture of two dear in our back yard taken with her camera phone, the deer were literally ghosts of their former selves.

The technology just isn't there yet, almost but no cigar! When I got my HTC One S, a camera phone that is considered to be very good but not excellent, I can take a decent photo if the thing is static, its bright and sunny (fast shutter speed) and I am very still in holding the phone. I find once the conditions of lighting, motion, light begin to deter the little cameras with even littler sensors just can't keep up.

With my phone camera, I have to delete about 95 % of all photos taken as being to soft or inferior for non-creative reasons. My deletion rate when shooting with a DSLR is about 10%.

And lets not talk about photos that are transferred to the computer screen, they don't stand up to much enlargement. I thought it was just me until I talked to friends with phones and their experiences were similar On the phone screen a picture that looks great when transferred to the computer and larger screen just doesn't hold up.

--
Hind sight is always better than foresight, except for lost opportunity costs.

The average snap shooter loves big zoom lenses and a phone has no zoom at all.

P&Ss take pictures, phones generally record an image. Subtle difference.

I think it has already affected current R&D, just look at the offerings that were just announced in the P&S catagory, some are actually downgrades, and most are sidesteps, there appears to have been zero R&D last year, so I think we can safely predict that there won't be any for next year either.

Brian

I hear the PS market surprisingly went up in the UK last year