The impending DSLR downturn and liquidity

As I've been pondering various threads and claims about the state and future of the DSLR market, I have been wondering whether the DSLR market is more stable than is usually represented. This alleged or perceived stability comes from the inherent lack of liquidity in DSLR equipment. Whereas a P&S owner may easily jump brands when it comes time to replace or upgrade equipment because all he has invested in a given brand is the camera itself, a committed DSLR owner has a harder time doing likewise.

A committed DSLR owner is one who hasn't just purchased a one-lens kit, but rather one that has invested into several pieces of brand-specific equipment to accompany a given DSLR body, such as flashes and lenses. If at the time of camera replacement he/she decides to jump brands, he will likely need to divest from his current brand, and this will make his move less liquid than that of a P&S owner making an equivalent shift. This lack of liquidity may in many cases serve as a disincentive to switch brands.

If this is correct, it would appear that at some levels, the DSLR market would have a certain degree of stability due to this liquidity consideration and associated brand loyalty. It is the non-committed part of the DSLR market where stability may not be quite as solid, and this is more than likely to reside in the lower, entry-level tiers where customers with minimal investment in a given brand (i.e., a one to two lens kit, maybe) are freer to switch brands at the time of replacement.

I think this lines up with Thom Hogan's view that the low-end DSLR market is about to get hammered (or is already getting hammered) by alternative, "disruptive" technologies such as micro-4/3.

Thoughts?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's easy to argue about equipment and technique, but hard to argue with a good photograph -- and more difficult to capture one .



Gallery and blog: http://esfotoclix.com
Special selections: http://esfotoclix.com/store
Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22061657@N03

of some of us here eNo who have tens of thousands tied up in Nikon specific equipment. And it's not just the dollar loss on disposal that weighs - it's the hassle of sourcing, learning about and troubleshooting new equipment. However, I think the majority of DSLR owners are much less heavily "invested" and it isn't a big factor in the market.
--
Jim

I think the pure play camera manufacturers are looking at video function as the disputive technology to the cinematic camera market.

Interestingly how Nikon listened to the wrong people - they listened to the newspaper photojournalists who wanted 720P for web use when they should have listed to the starving film markers who wanted 1080P for DVDs. An example of listening to their old customer base when they should have searched for new customers.

The only problem is that the cinematic camera market is even more of a niche market than DSLRs. Not sure it can replace the losses in the still camera market.

The future is not looking good for the people who are only interested in still photography. Advances and improvements will be focused on the video side and will start to crowd out improvements in the still photography side in future models.

eNo said:

As I've been pondering various threads and claims about the state and future of the DSLR market, I have been wondering whether the DSLR market is more stable than is usually represented. This alleged or perceived stability comes from the inherent lack of liquidity in DSLR equipment. Whereas a P&S owner may easily jump brands when it comes time to replace or upgrade equipment because all he has invested in a given brand is the camera itself, a committed DSLR owner has a harder time doing likewise.

A committed DSLR owner is one who hasn't just purchased a one-lens kit, but rather one that has invested into several pieces of brand-specific equipment to accompany a given DSLR body, such as flashes and lenses. If at the time of camera replacement he/she decides to jump brands, he will likely need to divest from his current brand, and this will make his move less liquid than that of a P&S owner making an equivalent shift. This lack of liquidity may in many cases serve as a disincentive to switch brands.

If this is correct, it would appear that at some levels, the DSLR market would have a certain degree of stability due to this liquidity consideration and associated brand loyalty. It is the non-committed part of the DSLR market where stability may not be quite as solid, and this is more than likely to reside in the lower, entry-level tiers where customers with minimal investment in a given brand (i.e., a one to two lens kit, maybe) are freer to switch brands at the time of replacement.

I think this lines up with Thom Hogan's view that the low-end DSLR market is about to get hammered (or is already getting hammered) by alternative, "disruptive" technologies such as micro-4/3.

Click to expand...

Very interesting thoughts. I think the market is saturated and there is no real innovation going on. DSLR manufacturers just add some features here and there but they did not fundementally investigate the whole piece.

A very interesting line of thought and I think you may well be right.

If you make comparisons to other market sectors it would only serve to reinforce what you are saying.

Perhaps being brand loyal we are all fuelling the flames, personally I'm not sure what the solution is but maybe the time has come to seriously consider the future of our photographic purchases.
No one wants to end up with a bag full of lemons!

eNo said:

I think this lines up with Thom Hogan's view that the low-end DSLR market is about to get hammered (or is already getting hammered) by alternative, "disruptive" technologies such as micro-4/3.

Thoughts?

Click to expand...

there is something to that, methinks. speaking from personal experience, for paid shoots i always shoot with backup which also winds up being my 'go anywhere' or travel cam so i tend to go small and light. when i was with canon, it was an xti. now that i'm with nikon...well, it's what's left of my canon system. but that's getting ab it burdensome. anyways, i've been mulling over a backup/travel camera and, honestly, i'm waiting to see what comes down the pipe as far as m 4/3 or possible dx EVF or rangefinder models. i really don't want another dslr...i want something small and capable like my yashica t5 super or contax g2 were. i've been using a g10 and a g11 outside and in the studio recently and it has been eye-opening...the 1/2000 flash sync has opened up a new world for fill or action...now i want that in a camera with a bigger sensor.

so there ya go...i'm a pretty easy mark as far as buying dslr's go but i won't be buying another entry level one. of the pros i know and work with, most have expressed a similar sentiment...they want a small sharp camera with dx or fx, just like we had in the film days.

--
dave

In the mid seventies, Canon came out with the AE-1 camera("So advanced, it's simple!"), complete with network, prime-time commercials and large ads in popular magazines--never before done to sell a complicated thing like a fully adjustable, interchangeable lens SLR camera.

There followed a mad rush by all the usual suspects(Nikon, Olympus, etc) to foist semi-automated SLRs upon ordinary, just-plain-folks, for whom some form of Kodak Instamatic had been working fine for quite a few years at that point. Then, in the early eighties, at the height of the 'You need an SLR' hysteria, the first totally automatic, point-and-shoot, automatic focus cameras came out(Canon Sure Shot, etc), and within just a few years, the consumer SLR market was but a ghost of it's former glory, at least as seen from the retail vantage point here in the USA.

Moral of story: If the customers don't need a complicated DSLR for a point-and-shoot job, eventually, some company will come out, and be successful, with a P&S that obviates the need for the overly complex camera. If I was Grandma, I wouldn't want a lousy(but complex) DSLR if a simple, nicely done P&S could do the job.
--
-KB-

eNo said:

It is the non-committed part of the DSLR market where stability may not be quite as solid, and this is more than likely to reside in the lower, entry-level tiers where customers with minimal investment in a given brand (i.e., a one to two lens kit, maybe) are freer to switch brands at the time of replacement.

Click to expand...

[Italics added.]

It is dangerous to take your user base for granted. One reason is that there are also photographers that are less invested in the brand who might be considering upgrading. It's one thing to lose a $900 lower end DSLR sale; it's quite another to lose a $3000 mid-level DSLR sale that would be accompanied by additional thousands in lenses and accessories.

eNo said:

I think this lines up with Thom Hogan's view that the low-end DSLR market is about to get hammered (or is already getting hammered) by alternative, "disruptive" technologies such as micro-4/3.

Click to expand...

Lower end DSLRs will undoubtedly be squeezed. Many consumers and photographer alike want something smaller than what is offered by consumer DSLRs. Consumers will land on these cameras and call it good; photographers will choose these cameras for their balance between image quality and size, and photographers won't hesitate to switch if persuasive reasons to do so are offered by the manufacturers. In neither case, will these represent a threat or an opportunity for a brand's mid-level and higher DSLR market share (except inasmuch as they can create some brand identity/recognition).
--
Anthony Beach

I'm not sure I agree that a lack of liquidity creates stability. Stability of an increasingly shrinking market??? That's like saying the housing market is more stable because people can't sell their houses. And that million plus housing is even more stable because those houses are the hardest to sell. I believe stability comes from liquidity, not a lack of liquidity. It may sound counter-intuitive, but a market where there are lots of buyers is more stable than one with fewer buyers simply because it is healthier.

Quash said:

I'm not sure I agree that a lack of liquidity creates stability. Stability of an increasingly shrinking market??? That's like saying the housing market is more stable because people can't sell their houses.

Click to expand...

Whoa! No one's making the argument that people can't sell their DSLR equipment, and that's not the definition illiquidity, anyway. BTW, people are able to sell their houses; they just can't do it at the prices they would like.

Quash said:

And that million plus housing is even more stable because those houses are the hardest to sell. I believe stability comes from liquidity, not a lack of liquidity. It may sound counter-intuitive, but a market where there are lots of buyers is more stable than one with fewer buyers simply because it is healthier.

Click to expand...

Well, that was colorful, but based on a flawed premise, it falls short of the mark of addressing the issue, I'm afraid. The liquidity that we were referring to here is one of transferring from one brand to the other, not merely selling one's stuff.

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's easy to argue about equipment and technique, but hard to argue with a good photograph -- and more difficult to capture one .



Gallery and blog: http://esfotoclix.com
Special selections: http://esfotoclix.com/store
Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22061657@N03

eNo said:

I have been wondering whether the DSLR market is more stable than is usually represented. This alleged or perceived stability comes from the inherent lack of liquidity in DSLR equipment.

Click to expand...

I'll address those statements in reverse order. What you refer to in sentence two is a gravity. Once attached to the system in question, there's a gravity that holds you in it. Some of that gravity is real, some is only perceived (people have this strange habit of valuing things at what they paid for it, not what it is worth). But to address the first sentence: it doesn't take a lot of switching to change brand destiny. And that switching takes place over years, not instantaneously. Nikon slid from a market share of near 40% to the low twenty percents in the film SLR era. Much of this was the constant loss of users to Canon's perceived better autofocus and long glass. We've witnessed swings as much as 8 percent in market share over the last decade. To put that in perspective, 8% of the 2009 DSLR market is US$359 million dollars in revenue. So even small slides that get sustained can have big bottom line impacts. Put another way, a 1% change in market share last year cost you US$45m in body sales, and probably US$10-20m in profits, depending upon where it occurred in your lineup. So "stable" is a relative word. A 1% leak will hurt. A 1% gain will feel good. Note that going from nearly all white lenses to more than half Nikon lenses at the Olympics in one generation had to have hurt Canon. That change alone represented many millions of dollars of lost opportunity.

eNo said:

I think this lines up with Thom Hogan's view that the low-end DSLR market is about to get hammered (or is already getting hammered) by alternative, "disruptive" technologies such as micro-4/3.

Click to expand...

Disruption is tricky. In the case of m4/3, I can still use my Nikon lenses on my m4/3 cameras (mounting a 24mm PC-E on the E-P2 is interesting ;~). Those of us who were looking for a quality compact to carry everywhere aren't necessarily "switching brands." Indeed, some of my old Leica M lenses suddenly got useful again.

But if your contention is that at the low end where someone doesn't have a lot of investment yet, that they may be more likely to switch to the disruptive technology, that's probably true.

--
Thom Hogan
author, Complete Guides to Nikon bodies (21 and counting)
http://www.bythom.com

all due respect eno, i agree with quash on this.

his use of the term liquidity and illiquidity captures the spirit of those terms in an economic context. what you are describing with respect to switching brands is much better thought of as friction than illiquidity.

either way, enjoyed your post, and hope you are loving the new d700.

eNo said:

Quash said:

I'm not sure I agree that a lack of liquidity creates stability. Stability of an increasingly shrinking market??? That's like saying the housing market is more stable because people can't sell their houses.

Click to expand...

Whoa! No one's making the argument that people can't sell their DSLR equipment, and that's not the definition illiquidity, anyway. BTW, people are able to sell their houses; they just can't do it at the prices they would like.

eNo said:

And that million plus housing is even more stable because those houses are the hardest to sell. I believe stability comes from liquidity, not a lack of liquidity. It may sound counter-intuitive, but a market where there are lots of buyers is more stable than one with fewer buyers simply because it is healthier.

Click to expand...

Well, that was colorful, but based on a flawed premise, it falls short of the mark of addressing the issue, I'm afraid. The liquidity that we were referring to here is one of transferring from one brand to the other, not merely selling one's stuff.

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's easy to argue about equipment and technique, but hard to argue with a good photograph -- and more difficult to capture one .



Gallery and blog: http://esfotoclix.com
Special selections: http://esfotoclix.com/store
Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22061657@N03

Click to expand...

cynerjist said:

all due respect eno, i agree with quash on this.

his use of the term liquidity and illiquidity captures the spirit of those terms in an economic context. what you are describing with respect to switching brands is much better thought of as friction than illiquidity.

either way, enjoyed your post, and hope you are loving the new d700.

Click to expand...

Hmm. It looks like I should have employed different terminology... in the title no less. Hopefully the main thrust of the argument hangs on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's easy to argue about equipment and technique, but hard to argue with a good photograph -- and more difficult to capture one .



Gallery and blog: http://esfotoclix.com
Special selections: http://esfotoclix.com/store
Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22061657@N03

I agree with the basic thrust of eNo's argument. I have a lot of Nikon gear collected over many years. I thought I had made up my mind to switch to Canon but when I assessed how much it would cost to replace all my Nikon glass with comparable Canon stuff, in addition to the cost of the new DSLR, I reconsidered. I got a really good deal on D700 (I'm guessing because it is due for replacement soon) and all my old lenses from my 35mm days work wonderfully.

I think most of the shift in brand popularity comes from new to DSLR segment of purchasers without a long term investment in any particular brand. Them and the "cost no object" crowd like high-end professionals.

Having said all of that, I thoroughly love my D700. I am able to capture pictures in low light that over the 25 odd years I have been seriously into photography were nothing more than a dream..

pluton said:

In the mid seventies, Canon came out with the AE-1 camera ...

Click to expand...

pluton said:

Then, in the early eighties, at the height of the 'You need an SLR' hysteria, the first totally automatic, point-and-shoot, automatic focus cameras came out(Canon Sure Shot, etc), and within just a few years, the consumer SLR market was but a ghost of it's former glory, at least as seen from the retail vantage point here in the USA.

Click to expand...

Not just in the USA. Autofocus point-and-shoots eventually took away about 70-80% of the SLR market worldwide. It was indeed a huge disruptive event for the camera makers, one they remember quite well. (It was actually Konica that invented the AF point-and-shoot.)

I'll just throw in that consumer fads are an unpredictable factor that often plays into market size -- there was a kind of photography fad in the 1970s. Otherwise perfectly sane people building home darkrooms, learning to push-process Tri-X in their bathrooms, and buying lots of SLR cameras and lenses. Tennis also enjoyed a period of fad status in the 1970s. Both fads died away, or maybe just got replaced by something else, and their markets shrank.

Still, it's certainly true that, fads aside, the overwhelming majority of the camera consumer market prefers smaller and simpler, on a sllding scale. And there is room between digicams and DSLRs for some category of cameras that is smaller and simpler than DSLRs, but shoots faster and better than a digicam. It will never be as large a market as the pure digicam market (presently almost 10X the size of the DSLR market, in units), but it will be substantial, and I'm sure it will come partly at the cost of DSLRs.

Apropos the original post, people on these forums seem to often forget that a huge part of the market for DSLRs are first-time DSLR buyers. In other words, the camera companies do not design purely to keep their current customers, or encourage them to upgrade. Far from it. Most of the design decisions in the low-end of the DSLR business are made with an eye towards winning the battle for people buying their first DSLR. Markets are continually refreshing in this way -- i.e. every year there will be another few million people who are just beginning to get interested in photography as a real hobby, or just had a baby, or just started college and are taking their first art class, or began watching birds in their backyard a year ago and then bought some binoculars, and then wanted to photograph them.

Thom Hogan said:

Disruption is tricky. In the case of m4/3, I can still use my Nikon lenses on my m4/3 cameras (mounting a 24mm PC-E on the E-P2 is interesting ;~). Those of us who were looking for a quality compact to carry everywhere aren't necessarily "switching brands." Indeed, some of my old Leica M lenses suddenly got useful again.

Click to expand...

I'm salivating at the idea of using my Summicron 35 with an EVIL.
--
Renato.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhlpedrosa/
OnExposure member
http://www.onexposure.net/

Good shooting and good luck
(after Ed Murrow)

MKVancr said:

I agree with the basic thrust of eNo's argument. I have a lot of Nikon gear collected over many years. I thought I had made up my mind to switch to Canon but when I assessed how much it would cost to replace all my Nikon glass with comparable Canon stuff, in addition to the cost of the new DSLR, I reconsidered. I got a really good deal on D700 (I'm guessing because it is due for replacement soon) and all my old lenses from my 35mm days work wonderfully.

I think most of the shift in brand popularity comes from new to DSLR segment of purchasers without a long term investment in any particular brand. Them and the "cost no object" crowd like high-end professionals.

Click to expand...

Yes, the "cost no object" crowd is a different crowd, for sure. I'd say two things about them a little differently, perhaps. First, many of them are after fulfilling a photographic requirement (i.e., "get the shot"), and whatever brand does the job is the one. Secondly, for these folks it often isn't about switching brands, because they already own them all! Yes, that's hyperbole, but you get the point: I've seen more than one pro that owns both Canon and Nikon, for instance. Again, whatever tool it takes to get the job done.

MKVancr said:

Having said all of that, I thoroughly love my D700. I am able to capture pictures in low light that over the 25 odd years I have been seriously into photography were nothing more than a dream..

Click to expand...

I'm looking forward to getting my D700 next week. It's truly a beloved camera, and I've seen so many amazingly clean shots from it, I can hardly wait.

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's easy to argue about equipment and technique, but hard to argue with a good photograph -- and more difficult to capture one .



Gallery and blog: http://esfotoclix.com
Special selections: http://esfotoclix.com/store
Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22061657@N03

Thom Hogan said:

eNo said:

I have been wondering whether the DSLR market is more stable than is usually represented. This alleged or perceived stability comes from the inherent lack of liquidity in DSLR equipment.

Click to expand...

I'll address those statements in reverse order. What you refer to in sentence two is a gravity.

Click to expand...

I think you're right. Liquidity was the wrong term to use, as I've acknowledged elswhere in the thread. Someone else called what I describe "friction." Both "gravity" and "friction" transcend what I learned in my basic Econ class, though I got both of these in spades in Physics.

Thom Hogan said:

Once attached to the system in question, there's a gravity that holds you in it.

Click to expand...

Or "friction" that makes a transition to another brand less palatable... okay, I'm getting it.

Thom Hogan said:

Some of that gravity is real, some is only perceived (people have this strange habit of valuing things at what they paid for it, not what it is worth).

Click to expand...

I discovered I'm one of those people when I went to sell my D80.

Thom Hogan said:

But to address the first sentence: it doesn't take a lot of switching to change brand destiny. And that switching takes place over years, not instantaneously. Nikon slid from a market share of near 40% to the low twenty percents in the film SLR era. Much of this was the constant loss of users to Canon's perceived better autofocus and long glass. We've witnessed swings as much as 8 percent in market share over the last decade. To put that in perspective, 8% of the 2009 DSLR market is US$359 million dollars in revenue. So even small slides that get sustained can have big bottom line impacts. Put another way, a 1% change in market share last year cost you US$45m in body sales, and probably US$10-20m in profits, depending upon where it occurred in your lineup. So "stable" is a relative word. A 1% leak will hurt. A 1% gain will feel good. Note that going from nearly all white lenses to more than half Nikon lenses at the Olympics in one generation had to have hurt Canon. That change alone represented many millions of dollars of lost opportunity.

Click to expand...

That's very interesting. I wonder, though, if these figures don't tell the whole story. Instead of getting twisted in abstract descriptions, let me illustrate by example. Suppose I and 999 of my best Nikonian buddies are invested into Nikon up the gills. We spent a lot 1 year ago, but this year and the next, nothing that Nikon is offering interests us enough to open our wallets. That means that 1000 of us aren't showing up in the revenue figures for two years, and maybe that adds up to $45M when you put it all together. For 2 years, we show up here and in other forums and moan how Nikon has let us down. We even threaten to switch, but never do, because we feel the gravity and friction of all that Nikon gear. Then at the end of this 2 year period, Nikon releases a D4 and a D400 and a bunch of new cool lenses and we go squeeling like kindergarten kiddos on Christmas morning to the nearest store and fork over ungodly amounts of money to get our new toys. Now the ledger swings $45M the other way... did anybody switch brands? Maybe, but it wasn't us. All this to say that the stability I spoke of in my OP may in some cases result in pent-up, potential revenues in the future. I think you've spoken about this, too, IIRC.

Thom Hogan said:

Thom Hogan said:

I think this lines up with Thom Hogan's view that the low-end DSLR market is about to get hammered (or is already getting hammered) by alternative, "disruptive" technologies such as micro-4/3.

Click to expand...

Disruption is tricky. In the case of m4/3, I can still use my Nikon lenses on my m4/3 cameras (mounting a 24mm PC-E on the E-P2 is interesting ;~). Those of us who were looking for a quality compact to carry everywhere aren't necessarily "switching brands." Indeed, some of my old Leica M lenses suddenly got useful again.

Click to expand...

You know, the more I think about m4/3, the less I think it threatens low-end DSLRs in a huge way. I see 3 categories of buyers:
1) Those who switch from P&S and would have never considered a DSLR.

2) Those who add m4/3 to their kit as a light/portable alternative to DSLR gear, but still use DSLR gear for the "serious work."

3) Those who would have bought a DSLR in the absence of m4/3, but opt for m4/3 instead.

Only #3 threatens the low-end, entry level DSLR market. The big question is how large of a segment #3 is. Without any backup data, I would guess that the majority of low-end DSLR buyers have already stepped into the fray, and the big question for this segment is whether they will feel sufficient "gravity" or "friction" to stick it out with DSLR, maybe upgrading to the next D3xyz when it comes out (however unpalatable that sounds to us), or whether they'll put their DSLR and one-lens kit in the droor and pick up an m4/3. Time will tell.

Thom Hogan said:

But if your contention is that at the low end where someone doesn't have a lot of investment yet, that they may be more likely to switch to the disruptive technology, that's probably true.

Click to expand...

Yes, I think it is.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's easy to argue about equipment and technique, but hard to argue with a good photograph -- and more difficult to capture one .



Gallery and blog: http://esfotoclix.com
Special selections: http://esfotoclix.com/store
Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22061657@N03

Eamon Hickey said:

pluton said:

In the mid seventies, Canon came out with the AE-1 camera ...

Click to expand...

peripheralfocus said:

Then, in the early eighties, at the height of the 'You need an SLR' hysteria, the first totally automatic, point-and-shoot, automatic focus cameras came out(Canon Sure Shot, etc), and within just a few years, the consumer SLR market was but a ghost of it's former glory, at least as seen from the retail vantage point here in the USA.

Click to expand...

Not just in the USA. Autofocus point-and-shoots eventually took away about 70-80% of the SLR market worldwide. It was indeed a huge disruptive event for the camera makers, one they remember quite well. (It was actually Konica that invented the AF point-and-shoot.)

Click to expand...

But I'll point out that those used the same film (35mm) that DSLRs did, and though their lens quality was nowhere near what one could get in a DSLR, I think the capture medium makes a big difference. For me personally, m4/3 is unappealing because I perceive that I would be giving up with a larger sensor can give me. Thom says his m4/3 matches his APS-C DSLR up to ISO800. Thing is, that's insufficient for me. I've tasted the low-light sugar, and I must keep consuming it. OTOH, I sense this isn't all that important to most people, even when the notice and complain about the occasional "grainy" shot.

peripheralfocus said:

I'll just throw in that consumer fads are an unpredictable factor that often plays into market size -- there was a kind of photography fad in the 1970s. Otherwise perfectly sane people building home darkrooms, learning to push-process Tri-X in their bathrooms, and buying lots of SLR cameras and lenses. Tennis also enjoyed a period of fad status in the 1970s. Both fads died away, or maybe just got replaced by something else, and their markets shrank.

Click to expand...

I'd say photography is pretty hot now, though in a different way, with tons of people taking tons of images and pushing them across the Internet. I'm often amazed at how many more people are taking photos (snapshots or whatever we call them) than 20 years ago.

peripheralfocus said:

Still, it's certainly true that, fads aside, the overwhelming majority of the camera consumer market prefers smaller and simpler, on a sllding scale. And there is room between digicams and DSLRs for some category of cameras that is smaller and simpler than DSLRs, but shoots faster and better than a digicam. It will never be as large a market as the pure digicam market (presently almost 10X the size of the DSLR market, in units), but it will be substantial, and I'm sure it will come partly at the cost of DSLRs.

Click to expand...

This is an interesting observation: wouldn't a market segment that 10X larger than another stand to lose more, from a purely probabilitistic point of view, than the smaller one from a switch to a middle segment? Yet that's not what the most recent CIPA data seems to suggest.

peripheralfocus said:

Apropos the original post, people on these forums seem to often forget that a huge part of the market for DSLRs are first-time DSLR buyers. In other words, the camera companies do not design purely to keep their current customers, or encourage them to upgrade. Far from it. Most of the design decisions in the low-end of the DSLR business are made with an eye towards winning the battle for people buying their first DSLR. Markets are continually refreshing in this way -- i.e. every year there will be another few million people who are just beginning to get interested in photography as a real hobby, or just had a baby, or just started college and are taking their first art class, or began watching birds in their backyard a year ago and then bought some binoculars, and then wanted to photograph them.

Click to expand...

And that's another good point. Many of these discussions assume a stable pool of potential photographers, without considering population growth, i.e., that every year, there's a new set of young folks that come into the "potential buyer" category.

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's easy to argue about equipment and technique, but hard to argue with a good photograph -- and more difficult to capture one .



Gallery and blog: http://esfotoclix.com
Special selections: http://esfotoclix.com/store
Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22061657@N03

But what the camera companies really need to ask is not what well-heeled westerners want but what Chinese and Indians want. They'll be the only growth markets for the next few years.
--
Jim