The end of the compact camera is near, but another kind of ‘compact camera’ is taking its place.
The end of the compact camera is near, but another kind of ‘compact camera’ is taking its place.
According to the latest report by the Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA), total shipments of cameras and related goods declined 18.5% year on year in 2015 to 35.4 million units. 2015 continues the downward trend that has hit the industry since the global recession of 2009.
However, compared to the 30.9% contraction in shipments for 2014, the decline in 2015 was substantially less. This comes largely off the back of stable demand for interchangeable lens cameras (ILCs) and their lenses, as they accounted for 37% of total shipments.
Shipment of digital cameras with built-in lenses (i.e. compact cameras) on the other hand, showed a decline of 24.5% year on year to 22.3 million units. That’s less than 80% of what they were in 2014!
“Compared to the 30.9% contraction in shipments for 2014, the decline in 2015 was substantially less.”
Why compact cameras have fallen so far
The reasons for compact cameras’ dramatic fall are twofold – one is due to the fact that prices of interchangeable lens cameras have fallen dramatically over the years, so it simply makes more sense to get an ILC over a compact camera. Today’s ILCs are small enough and offer better performance than compacts, so why not pick one up if you’re going for a new camera?
The second – and probably bigger – reason is that the cameras that in our smartphones are getting better and better. Advanced camera functions are becoming more and more commonplace. Some smartphones offer the option to save images in raw, while others offer in-camera filter effects, panorama capture modes, and even the ability to shoot 4K video.
Social media is the new photo album
Mobile phones have two key advantages over compact cameras: they’re always with you, and they allow you to instantly share whatever images you’ve taken with the largest audience available: the internet.
Posting on social media has become today’s equivalent of printing photos to display. Social media options are endless, from Facebook to Tumblr to Instagram, much faster than waiting for prints develop, and for the most part, free as well. After all, the photo is already in your phone and the phone is already connected to the Internet, so it’s really a case of pressing a few buttons on the screen.
Some compact cameras have gained these functionalities too, but for most users, the quality they get from their smartphones is good enough, especially for online and messaging, so why carry yet another gadget?
How compact cameras might weather the storm
It’s a confluence of forces that spell dread tidings for the compact camera. Already companies like GoPro are scaling down, thanks to the rough financial times we’re going through, and this should only become more prevalent through the industry.
The compact camera portfolio can only reasonably continue in three forms: The action/all-weather camera for conditions you wouldn’t want to expose your smartphone to, the superzoom compact for people who want extended reach, and the premium compact which offers a larger sensor, for image quality that comes closer to ILCs.
The most popular camera today is – guess who?
The numbers show this too. Despite the falling numbers of camera shipments through the years, the number of photographs taken and shared online has skyrocketed. InfoTrends’ 2014 Worldwide Image Capture Forecast states that approximately 810 billion photos were taken worldwide in 2014. That number is set to grow to an astonishing 1 trillion photos in 2015. So where are all these images coming from?
The smartphone in everybody’s hands. Flickr’s Year in Review 2015 shows that 42% of their users used an iPhone to capture the images on their website, compared to just 27% by Canon EOS users and 16% with Nikon cameras. In fact, different versions of the iPhone take up 8 of the top 20 cameras that are used on Flickr.
It’s obvious that the cameras in our smartphones are the cameras driving photography today. And that’s certainly something camera makers should start taking note of. Rather than trying to create similar but bigger cameras, they should perhaps focus on helping their customers improve their skills, so they’ll naturally look towards ILCs to take them further.
That, or take a leaf out of Carl Zeiss’s book, and move into creating accessories like clip-on lenses for smartphones. Either way, it’s clear to see that there are resources currently being devoted to compact cameras that could be better used in other ways.
“Despite the falling numbers of camera shipments through the years, the number of photographs taken and shared online has skyrocketed.”
