Lazy people and "smartphones" continue to erode P&S sales

BBC:

23 December 2011 Last updated at 09:35 ET
Smartphones eat into low-end camera sales in US, study

Smartphones are eating into sales of basic cameras and camcorders in
the US, according to market researchers.

The NPD Group said the point-and-shoot camera market sold 17% fewer
units over the first 11 months of the year compared to the same period
in 2010.

It said the pocket camcorder market fell by 13% over the same period.

Its online survey of adults and teenagers suggested users were also
more likely to opt for their phone camera to take footage "on the
fly".

Respondents said they were more likely to opt for their smartphone,
rather than a dedicated device, to take pictures or video of "fun,
casual or spontaneous moments".

However, smartphones were less likely to be used when it came to
holiday snaps.
SLR sales stay strong

NPD's data also suggested that the total share of photos taken on a
camera had fallen below the halfway point for the first time.

The study suggested that 44% of photos were taken on a camera over the
last year, down from 52% over the previous period.

By contrast the share of photos taken with a smartphone rose to 27%
from 17%.

However, higher-end cameras appear to be immune from the rise of the
smartphone - at least for now. NPD said 12% more detachable lens
cameras - including SLRs - were sold over the last 11 months.

It added that sales of cameras with a 10x zoom lens or greater rose by
16%.

"There is no doubt that the smartphone is becoming 'good enough' much
of the time," said NPD's senior imaging analyst Liz Cutting.

"But for important events, single purpose cameras or camcorders are
still largely the device of choice."
'Faff-free'

Experts suggest the trend is in part due to the popularity of apps
including Instagram, Twitter and Facebook which allow pictures to be
uploaded to social networks immediately after they are taken.

"When you combine the fact that smartphone camera quality has
increased roughly 10-fold from where we were five years ago and the
fact that we have all these apps and services that make it easy to
host the photos, it makes it a no-brainer that we use them rather than
dedicated devices with which there is a huge faff involved to get the
footage online," said Chris Green, principal technology analyst at
Davies Murphy Group Europe.

Yahoo-owned Flickr's popular photo sharing site appears to confirm the
point. Its statistics suggest that Apple's iPhone 4 is the most
popular camera in its community.

The next device in line is the Nikon D90 SLR camera, while the closest
performing smartphone by another manufacturer is the HTC Evo 4G.

 

I bought one for the camera because I can download an app from an advocacy
group that deals with vision issues that uses the camera as a magnifier to
enable reading of documents with small print

 

Just out of curiosity, what makes them lazy? If their phones are a
tool sufficient for their needs why should they carry another camera?
Couldn't a large format photographer just as easily call SLR shooters
lazy?

 

The point simply is that I do not always carry the camera with me, but I
always have my smartphone with me. This takes images of surprisingly
good quality.

10 days ago I was in Abu Simbel (Egypt) with the family, took a snapshot
of the family with the background of the temple, and immediately emailed
it to all relatives. I also shot again the same photo with the DSLR, but
the smartphone shot is what was sent to the relatives.

 

Wow, sounds like an expensive, power hungry magnifying glass to me.

Trevor.

 

you would think so.
It's superior for a number of reasons.
It corrects for the lighting conditions in a way that paper and glass cannot
do in ambient light.
Eg you can read in dimmer lighting situations.
It lacks the uneven distortion that a hand held lens produces across its
surface.
It improves resolution of the underlying font/image/whatever.
You can adjust the size of the font in a way

I had resisted buying a phone because I couldn't see the information. I
bought one once a vocational counselor showed me what it could do.
I was so impressed, especially since Siri makes accessing the information
easier.

The institute has a number of other things that I will be downloading over
the next week and see what value I have gotten.

 

Which offers a degree of magnification and image quality at least an
order of magnitude above any optical magnifying glass, plus a host of
other features useful to those with poor sight. Have you checked the
prices of the very best optical magnifying glasses you can get? Sounds
a good deal to me.

 

Which is what many folk do. From what I see, the smart phone camera
makes more people are enjoy photography. Except for the professionals,
isn't personal enjoyment one of the big reasons people take pictures?

 

Yes -- or else, it's a way to use the smartphone you actually have with
you to accomplish something that in theory would be more efficiently
accomplished by the magnifying glass you forgot to bring.

 

the nice thing is if you start people interested with a basic tool and
product they may go on to develop interests further.
It's good for entire field.

 

My medical nephew has an app which lets him measure the pulse. He is
waiting for an app which will enable him to measure blood O2 in the
finger.

Regards,

Eric Stevens

 

Every watch with a second hand I've ever owned has had that "app".

My wife, a now-retired nurse, has never owned a watch without a second
hand. No designer watch, no matter how stylish, has ever met with her
approval to own.

I once bought her a very nice, and expensive, wristwatch as a
Christmas gift. It didn't have a second hand, but I thought she could
wear it as a dress watch. I had to exchange it.

 

Why do the blood pressures read by nurses differ so much from
doctors, at least in the 'Health Fair' at the Mall, they do.
The quacks findings are always higher for me.

 

This one reads out the pulse directly. It also gives a waveform.

Regards,

Eric Stevens

 

It's amazing how non technical people think you simply need an 'app" to do
anything, forgetting the sensors/interface are the real hardware, and the
iphone simply adds a processor and display. In many cases the device can be
made just as cheaply as a stand alone item rather than an iphone add-on.

Trevor.

 

She could always use the "one Mississippi" method. It worked great for
me in the darkroom.

 

so you just pressed the watch to the person's skin and it directly read
out the pulse? amazing! and to think all those years people did it the
hard way by counting.

no, your watch did not have any such app. *you* were the app, not the
watch.

fortunately, technology has advanced since then. not only can a
smartphone measure one's pulse but it can measure many other things
too, including blood sugar, and even alert a doctor should the
measurements be outside of normal. did your watch do all of that?
didn't think so.

did she at least accept digital watches or was she analog-only?

 

It's amazing how non technical people think you simply need an 'app" to do
anything, forgetting the sensors/interface are the real hardware, and the
iphone simply adds a processor and display. In many cases the device can be
made just as cheaply as a stand alone item rather than an iphone add-on.[/QUOTE]

it's amazing how many people resist advances in technology. why must
one carry multiple devices or do it manually the way our ancestors did,
when there's a perfectly capable device that slips into your pocket
that can do it all a whole lot easier and a lot more accurately too?

 

I'm impressed a phone can do it now, for so many years diabetics have had to
draw blood to do it. Or does the phone do that too?

Trevor.

 

Yes, sometimes the phone can do amazing things with only a simple "app", in
which case I have no complaints. However other times you need to buy the
actual device that makes the measurement and simply use the phone as a
display, and that's an entirely different matter IMO.
And I bet you have NO idea what the accuracy is in any case.

Trevor.