Camera market to grow to 135.4 million units by 2014
Analyst firm iSuppli forecasts modest growth for digital still cameras, as phones “increasingly become the primary image-capture device for consumers.”
The firm estimates factory unit shipments of compact DSCs are projected to rise by 10.4 percent and reach 121.4 million units in 2010 — even though unit sales rose as prices declined, and consumer demand increased.
This comes after a particularly bad year: camera sales expanded 16.3 percent in 2006; another 19.5 percent in 2007; and 10.6 percent in 2008 — but in 2009 shipments fell 13.8 percent to 110 million units.
Cameras will enjoy modest growth for the next three years — but production will start to flatten in 2014, when shipments are expected to decline by 0.6 percent to 135.4 million units, iSuppli says.
Particularly, cameras at the low end of the spectrum will encounter stiff opposition from the camera phones, the firm says. Also, a higher megapixel count is no longer an automatic selling point for DSCs given that megapixel density has reached a point of diminishing returns, especially in mature markets. Growth will come for cameras that also offer HD video capture, as well as 3D, GPS, and Wi-Fi, iSuppli says.
No comments:
Post a Comment