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News: Point and Shoot Cameras are Basically Dead

Pao Dolina

Active member


35aLQgc.jpg



Almost every major camera manufacturer has either openly discontinued its point-and-shoot line of cameras or has not produced a new one in many years, according to a new report. In short, smartphones have all but totally replaced compact cameras.


The compact camera market, colloquially known as point-and-shoot cameras, has been experiencing a massive collapse in worldwide shipments over the last decade and a half. Since 2008, when worldwide shipments reached 110.7 million cameras, the market has significantly shrunk and fallen to 3.01 million units as of 2021 — a 97% drop.


Nikkei reports that in response to the market’s contraction, Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Fujifilm, and Sony have all either dramatically scaled back productions or outright admitted that there will be no further compact cameras.

“Although we are shifting to higher-end models, we have strong support for lower-end models, and will continue to develop and produce them as long as there is demand,” Canon tells Nikkei.


Canon denies that it isn’t planning to make new compact cameras, but it hasn’t released a new one since 2019.

Sony’s response echoes Canon’s and the company says that it is not discontinuing new product development in the compact camera space, although Nikkei notes the company hasn’t made a new “Cyber-Shot” camera — its compact camera line — since 2019.


Nikkei reports that Nikon has stopped developing cameras that would fall under its “Coolpix” line, the company’s branding for compact point-and-shoot style cameras. Nikon tells Nikkei that it still sells two high-magnification models and that future production volume will be determined by the market, which as noted, isn’t growing.


Panasonic, which at one point owned the top share of Japan’s compact camera market, tells Nikkei that it has been reducing the volume of point-and-shoots that it has been producing over the last several years in response to the shrinking market. Additionally, while it plans to keep making current compact cameras for the time being, it will focus on developing high-end mirrorless cameras aimed at enthusiasts and professionals, including a camera that it plans to release next year that it is developing in conjunction with Leica.


Nikkei claims Fujifilm has ceased production on its compact camera line “FinePix” and is not actively developing new models for it, instead focusing its efforts on higher-end models like the X100V and above.


Ricoh, which owns the Pentax brand, and OM Digital aren’t mentioned in the story, but Ricoh seems unfazed by the market contraction and has notably released two point-and-shoot cameras in the last year: the WG-80 and the GR IIIx (and later along with its special edition). Ricoh seems immune to making decisions in line with market trends, as it has also stubbornly refused to make a mirrorless Pentax camera, going so far as to say that the brand “cannot go mirrorless.”


It has been a long, slow process, but the death of the point-and-shoot appears all but complete at the hands of the smartphone, whose imaging capabilities manufacturers continue to improve.
 

Pao Dolina

Active member
Click here for the point & shoot cameras released in the last 5 years.

Below are the number of models released per year

2022

- 0

2021

- 1

2020

- 6

2019

- 11

2018

- 18

2017

- 10
 

Pao Dolina

Active member
Last 6 years worldwide shipments of digital still cameras.

Year201720182019202020212022 forecast
Total Cameras24,978,48619,423,37115,216,9578,886,2928,361,5217,850,000
Point & Shoot13,302,7978,663,5746,755,4673,578,6433,013,2502,560,000
Total SLR & Mirrorless11,675,68910,759,7978,461,4905,307,6495,348,2715,290,000
SLR7,595,7086,620,9994,504,9872,374,5692,241,772-
Mirrorless4,079,9814,138,7983,956,5032,933,0803,106,499-
 
Last edited:

Pao Dolina

Active member
While the P&S market indeed has shrunk, the lack of new cameras may also be linked to the pandemic and components shortage.

2022 forecast does mention COVID & supply chain constraints as reasons but other related industries like desktop & laptops boomed in the same period.

Let us see how the later part of 2022 & 2023 will give us.

Some interesting camera shipment stats

Smartphones vs film & digital still cameras


Digital camers: dSLR vs Mirrorless vs Point & Shoots (no smartphone)

rSOudXP.png


Digital camers: dSLR vs Mirrorless (no smartphone or point & shoot)

8T1R2Lv.png
 
Last edited:

Pao Dolina

Active member
Last 6 years worldwide shipments of digital still cameras.

Year201720182019202020212022 forecast
Total Cameras24,978,48619,423,37115,216,9578,886,2928,361,5217,850,000
Point & Shoot13,302,7978,663,5746,755,4673,578,6433,013,2502,560,000
Total SLR & Mirrorless11,675,68910,759,7978,461,4905,307,6495,348,2715,290,000
SLR7,595,7086,620,9994,504,9872,374,5692,241,772-
Mirrorless4,079,9814,138,7983,956,5032,933,0803,106,499-

CIPA members as a whole had mirrorless doing better than point & shoots + SLR.

I think P&S + SLR will go below 0.5 million/year by 2026? Mirrorless will be 6-7 million annually?

Catering to working photogs and enthusiasts demanding the last 1% of performance.

Year​
2019
2020
2021
2022
Total Cameras​
15,216,957​
8,886,292​
8,361,521​
8,011,598​
Point & Shoot​
6,755,467​
3,578,643​
3,013,250​
2,084,865​
Total SLR & Mirrorless​
8,461,490​
5,307,649​
5,348,271​
5,926,733​
SLR​
4,504,987​
2,374,569​
2,241,772​
1,853,222​
Mirrorless​
3,956,503​
2,933,080​
3,106,499​
4,073,511​
% of Point & Shoots​
44.39%​
40.27%​
36.04%​
26.02%​
% of SLR & Mirrorless​
55.61%​
59.73%​
63.96%​
73.98%​

16 years ago this slide was shown at the unveiling of the 2007 iPhone 2G.

yDex8ZT.png


Puts into perspective what annual worldwide shipments of nearly quarter billion iPhones and about 1 billion Android smartphones have done to game consoles, digital cameras, MP3 players and PCs.

wlfD8Qy.png
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Pao,

Thanks for your detailed report!

This is as staggering as the eclipse of the olive oil lamp with candlelight and the snuffing out of the latter with the electric light bulb!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Mirrorless still constitute an over $4 billion a year Market!

To what extent are there pathways for smartphone-driven technical advances to reach professional cameras?

Asher
 

Pao Dolina

Active member
Mirrorless still constitute an over $4 billion a year Market!

To what extent are there pathways for smartphone-driven technical advances to reach professional cameras?

Asher
A breakthrough in image sensors for smartphones need to occur before it can go after the last 1% of performance.

I was looking for this marketing data for so so long and finally got around to it.

Above screenshot is the units shipped in 2006 worldwide for consumer devices like


- game consoles
- digital cameras
- MP3 players
- PCs
- mobile phones

Smartphones at best reduced or at worst completely killed all the listed devices in 2006.

Video consoles have reduced

Consumer & low-end consumer digital cameras are dead & only high-end specialized or professional are left at a total of less than 8.012 million.

x8CyZ3k.png


MP3 players have become extinct like the iPod

PC sales have only resurged from 2020-2022 because of COVID remote work/study

50F6bRE.png


Mobile phones have become nearly 100% iPhone or Android. The original Nokia feature phones of old are relegated to people who cannot afford a $50 Android phone.

iPhones makes up more than 226 million to 235 million. This represents 17.3-18.8% of the market priced between $429-1599. Apple being at the top ~20% follows the Pareto Principle. Which allows Apple to grab top ~80% smartphone profit share for multiple years in a row. This also helps avoid the legal definition of monopoly for almost all countries.

Android is approximately 1 billion. This represents 82.7-81.2% of the market at all price points. Most brands struggle to get any profit resulting in very short Security Updates of about 1-2 years only when iPhone approaches 8.
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
A breakthrough in image sensors for smartphones need to occur before it can go after the last 1% of performance.

That is not likely to happen.


Mobile phones have become nearly 100% iPhone or Android. The original Nokia feature phones of old are relegated to people who cannot afford a $50 Android phone.

That is the situation in developed countries. I am not so sure that it is the same in poorer countries, I was quite surprised to find very different phones in Africa when I was there a few years ago. They had smartphones prominently advertising the capacity to use Whatsapp or Facebook, but with smaller screens, poorer processors and apparently some simpler operating system. And I just checked alibaba, similar phones still exist and run KaiOS.

There is a further aspect: while technically running Android, phones in China (and also Russia, I think), do not run Google services. That makes them quite different to the ones we have in Europe or the USA.
 

Pao Dolina

Active member
That is not likely to happen.

I would not discount that from happening. R&D money from billions of image sensors that goes into every smartphone, surveillance cameras and other devices shipped annually creates access to larger economies of scale, which meant they could spend more money in development of their designs/tech so they were able to overlap the old large system vendors who had slower development cycles and smaller revenues.

This is a reason why Sony's mirrorless image sensors outperforms their rivals. Not because they outsold Canon, Nikon, Fuji, etc but because half of all smartphones uses their image sensors.

What killed the digital camera is its limited utility to just record photos/video and their bulk. So the appeal is rather limited to those willing to carry something relatively unwieldy.

There has been some demonstrations of magazines, newspapers, ad agencies trying out iPhones for paid work. If Apple were to put a USB4 40Gbps port in the next iPhone it would greatly help filmakers who want to use its unique size to do commercial videos.

That is the situation in developed countries. I am not so sure that it is the same in poorer countries, I was quite surprised to find very different phones in Africa when I was there a few years ago. They had smartphones prominently advertising the capacity to use Whatsapp or Facebook, but with smaller screens, poorer processors and apparently some simpler operating system. And I just checked alibaba, similar phones still exist and run KaiOS.

There is a further aspect: while technically running Android, phones in China (and also Russia, I think), do not run Google services. That makes them quite different to the ones we have in Europe or the USA.

The largest economic growth right now is in Africa. The continent is expected to grow to more than 1 billion within the decade.
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
I would not discount that from happening. R&D money from billions of image sensors that goes into every smartphone, surveillance cameras and other devices shipped annually creates access to larger economies of scale, which meant they could spend more money in development of their designs/tech so they were able to overlap the old large system vendors who had slower development cycles and smaller revenues.

It is not a question of money. The limitations come from the fundamental nature of light.
 

Pao Dolina

Active member
It is not a question of money. The limitations come from the fundamental nature of light.
Similar claims were made when it came to die shrinks of chips.

Many pointed to laws of physics.

And yet R&D money and time allowed to look for work arounds for it.

XGTSDrQFPbJZEoRoPaA4RA-970-80.jpg.webp


Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/i...ntil-2036-from-nanometers-to-the-angstrom-era

One work around to improve image quality of small image sensor cameras is computational photography. I would love to see that software tech be applied to a future Canon EOS RF full frame body to improve image quality further.

 
Last edited:

TimTom42

New member
Welcome to the forum! It's great to have you here. It looks like you have some interesting ideas about camera shipment stats, particularly when comparing smartphones to film and digital still cameras. It will definitely be interesting to see how the market changes over the next year or two. In the meantime, it would be great to hear your thoughts and ideas on the topic!
Let us see how the later part of 2022 & 2023 will give us.

Some interesting camera shipment stats

Smartphones vs film & digital still cameras
 
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