# Canon to withdraw from the low-priced compact digital camera



## Diko (Feb 24, 2014)

Most probable and IMO well expected move from Canon is to move out of cheap (under *$200*) cameras due to the ever increasing market share of the phone cameras.

According to *digicame-info.com* *Fujifilm*,*Olympus*, *Panasonic*, *Casio* are also considering that. 

As a trend below is an estimate of *DSLR *and *DSC* market shrinking with huge 15% in just 5 years:







Picture source: *image-sensors-world.blogspot.com*


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## neuroanatomist (Feb 24, 2014)

In 2013, interchangeable lens cameras accounted for 480B ¥, and fixed lens cameras accounted for 404B ¥. I don't know what fraction of P&S market constitutes 'cheap' cameras, but the bulk of the dSLR market are 'cheap' bodies, and I suspect the same is true for the fixed lens camera market. 

Sure, the market is contracting. But fixed lens cameras accounted for ~46% of all camera revenues last year...somehow, I don't think vendors will abandon that market in the near future.


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## Lightmaster (Feb 24, 2014)

i heard olympus, pana thinking about withdrawing. 

but when others go there is less competition.. bigger market share and more profitable for the remaining.


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## Sella174 (Feb 24, 2014)

Easy solution: raise prices ... then you're not selling cheap cameras anymore. ;D


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## Orangutan (Feb 24, 2014)

Lightmaster said:


> i heard olympus, pana thinking about withdrawing.
> 
> but when others go there is less competition.. bigger market share and more profitable for the remaining.



The conventional wisdom is that "the competition" isn't from other budget digicams, but from smartphones. Smartphone images are now close-enough to the quality of budget digicams that there's no point in buying/carrying a second gadget for people in that market. Digicams need to offer something of sufficient added value that consumers (I use that word intentionally) will be willing to spend the money, and also willing to carry the camera. (If they don't carry the camera, they won't buy a replacement when new models come out...or when they drop/lose it, whichever comes first)


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## Sella174 (Feb 24, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> Digicams need to offer something of sufficient added value that *consumers* (I use that word intentionally) will be willing to spend the money, and also willing to carry the camera.



Consumers ... ah, there's the rub.

In my view, digital P&S cameras were a natural progression from film P&S cameras, with both having "consumers" (aka the general public at large) as target market. From this, cameras in 'phones and tablets are the further progression. This effectively means that consumer-orientated digital P&S cameras are a dead market. It's gone and finished.

The future of digital P&S cameras lie in niche markets. Manufacturers must make camera for those enthusiasts (not consumers) who want an actual camera for the simple fact that it can do something that their iPhone can't do. For example, sub-f/2 (fixed-lens) primes, BiF-trackable AF, complete and utter enviromental-sealing, and a nice design.


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## Orangutan (Feb 24, 2014)

Sella174 said:


> Orangutan said:
> 
> 
> > Digicams need to offer something of sufficient added value that *consumers* (I use that word intentionally) will be willing to spend the money, and also willing to carry the camera.
> ...



If consumers can be persuaded to buy and play Angry Birds, I bet they can be persuaded to buy and use P&S cameras.  

P&S as niche will not be very profitable. I doubt there are enough enthusiasts who are willing to buy such a capable P&S at niche prices, but not willing to pay more for even-more-capable SLR or high-end mirrorless. .


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## Sella174 (Feb 24, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> If consumers can be persuaded to buy and play Angry Birds, I bet they can be persuaded to buy and use P&S cameras.



I have a better idea ... DOOM II Deathmatch over WiFi on all Canon DSLR cameras! It'll be great for those boring press events.


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## Lightmaster (Feb 24, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> Lightmaster said:
> 
> 
> > i heard olympus, pana thinking about withdrawing.
> ...




less companys who make competing cameras.... less competition from them.

i have a nice smartphone but to be honest i still like a small pocketable camera.
when oly and pana doesn´t make these cameras anymore.... bigger chance i will buy a canon.


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## Robert Welch (Feb 24, 2014)

The main reason smartphones are encroaching on the P&S camera market is the flexibility they have with the image after taking the photos. With a camera, you take the photo, and there is really little else you can do until you get the photo out of the camera and into a computer. With the smartphones, you take the photo and that simply begins what you can do with the image from there. The quality of the image is no longer important, past a certain point at least. It doesn't matter how good the compact cameras are, the smartphones will continue to grow in usage for photo taking in their place. For more serious photographers, the cheap P&S was never really for them to begin with.


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## neuroanatomist (Feb 24, 2014)

Robert Welch said:


> The main reason smartphones are encroaching on the P&S camera market is the flexibility they have with the image after taking the photos. With a camera, you take the photo, and there is really little else you can do until you get the photo out of the camera and into a computer.



Little else? Obviously, you haven't seen the Canon PowerShot N Facebook Edition with the dedicated FB upload button. 






  :


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## tntwit (Feb 24, 2014)

Robert Welch said:


> The quality of the image is no longer important, past a certain point at least.



Must be, because I have yet to be impressed by a cell phone camera despite the rant on the internet that they are just as good as expensive, high end DSLRs.

The super slow shutter speed and weak flash make them useless indoors for pictures of people unless you ask people to pose. Forget pictures of your kids.

No doubt the ease of being able to instantly publish has made the cell phone desirable.

Supposedly the cell phone makers are pushing harder to make better cameras. Time will tell.

I would've thought it would have made a logical business partnership for Canon or Nikon to pair with a cell phone company to handle the camera function. Seems like a no brainer. It would give the phone instant clout just like dropping a Cummins diesel into a Dodge truck did for them 25 years ago when no one was buying their trucks (and now Nissan is adding a Cummins to the Titan that has largely been ignored by the public). More importantly, it will keep the Canon/Nikon name in front of the public. Seems now names like Nokia are becoming the respected brands in cell phone photography.

Similarly, TomTom (and probably others) have added their GPS apps to the marketplace because no one wants a separate GPS anymore.


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## dstppy (Feb 24, 2014)

Smart phones are taking over because people can't be bothered.

My wife is an iPhoneographer (which drives me up the wall) but if she's in the shot, she wants a high-end P&S or DSLR used because she KNOWS what they look like on the computer.

2 more years your toaster will probably have a camera in it.

Just so you know, I had to google that . . . just to be sure someone didn't have a kickstarter for that already.


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## Hannes (Feb 24, 2014)

tntwit said:


> I would've thought it would have made a logical business partnership for Canon or Nikon to pair with a cell phone company to handle the camera function. Seems like a no brainer.



It would make a lot of sense for canon since they have the entire production assembly for it. It would be pretty easy to whack the small P&S sensor into a phone, just look at the latest sony phone which has a bigger than usual sensor.


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## jebrady03 (Feb 24, 2014)

I don't think the biggest problem is portability, sensor size, in-camera or in-phone effects, connectivity, etc. I think the biggest problem is "the value of an image". Most people are so inundated with dozens, hundreds, or even THOUSANDS of pictures a day that at most, a single image is in front of their faces for a fraction of a second. There's simply no time for the average person to appreciate the uniqueness, subtleties, and nuances of a particular photo - much less the artistic impact it makes (or, could in theory if one were to give it some time).

Sure, top-tier photography will still stand out, even on FB and Instagram, but "the masses" - who in the past may have purchased a dedicated point and shoot or even a low-end DSLR - have a hard time getting out of full-auto mode and capitalizing on the strengths of these cameras to make their images more appealing. Instead, they'd rather slap an ugly *** filter on top of it to garner the extra fraction of a second it takes from their friends to elicit a "like" before they move on to even more images from others who NEED likes in order to bolster their self-confidence.


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## Don Haines (Feb 24, 2014)

dstppy said:


> Smart phones are taking over because people can't be bothered.
> 
> My wife is an iPhoneographer (which drives me up the wall) but if she's in the shot, she wants a high-end P&S or DSLR used because she KNOWS what they look like on the computer.
> 
> ...


What a great idea! A toaster with a camera! It could tell how well toasted the bread is!


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## Robert Welch (Feb 24, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> Robert Welch said:
> 
> 
> > The main reason smartphones are encroaching on the P&S camera market is the flexibility they have with the image after taking the photos. With a camera, you take the photo, and there is really little else you can do until you get the photo out of the camera and into a computer.
> ...



Yes, this is Canon's attempted answer to the problem, but is it enough just to have access to Facebook? People already have a phone, over 50% are smartphones from what I understand, and all those smartphones already have a camera in them. It's simply a question of "is the camera in the phone good enough?". As has been pointed out, the answer for many is yes. How many people were buying a cheap P&S for image quality anyway? Everyone knows, a good camera cost more money, so nobody was fooled into thinking they had some awesome camera when they buy the cheapest one Walmart had in stock. How much worse is the smartphone camera than that? Not enough to make a difference, apparently.

Canon could try to put more feature in the camera to make it more like using a smartphone, but at that point, why not just get a smartphone? Nokia seems to be one of the companies that is really working hard to get a better camera built into the phone, but one of the big issues is, can it still be used as a phone? That is the ultimate criteria for those who might be looking at a camera vs. just using the phone camera. The bottom line is, the best camera to use is the one you have with you, and everyone has their phone with them most of the time. So by default, it becomes the best camera.


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## scottburgess (Feb 25, 2014)

Diko said:


> As a trend below is an estimate of *DSLR *and *DSC* market shrinking with huge 15% in just 5 years:



All right, all right, everybody calm down! There's no fire here. 

Sorry, Diko, but this is what happens when bizarre chart types are used to share data--it becomes very hard to interpret what is actually happening. The outer rings are the projected market, the inner rings are the current market. 37% of $9.1 billion is $3.367 billion. 22% of $17 billion is 3.74 billion, an _increase_ of 11% instead of a drop of 15%. Likewise the units display growth from 329 million to 588 million. Considering that includes projected erosion of the small point-and-shoot market, the growth in SLRs should be larger in percentage terms.

Don't feel bad, it took me almost five minutes to figure this out. The dip***t who created this chart should be spanked IMO. The natural tendency is to compare the rings against each other, which is impossible without a hand calculator. Simple stacked bar graphs would have been much easier to compare visually.

I also would not place a lot of confidence in these projections as they sound overly optimistic. Consider the source: a semiconductor company. Something fishy in the fish market? Perhaps.


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## dstppy (Feb 25, 2014)

Don Haines said:


> What a great idea! A toaster with a camera! It could tell how well toasted the bread is!



No no no. That would make SENSE. Think Web Two-point-oh.

What the camera is for is to do facial recognition to:
1) identify the person and determine their likes (probably from scanning all the meta-data that your toaster has on you)
2) identify how satisfied you are with the results (and upload that meta-data to no place in particular that the consumer needs to know about)

Of course, it will work as well as when they (google and apple) transitioned from hardware/software based voice recognition to cloud-based crowd-adjusted results.


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## wickidwombat (Feb 25, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> Robert Welch said:
> 
> 
> > The main reason smartphones are encroaching on the P&S camera market is the flexibility they have with the image after taking the photos. With a camera, you take the photo, and there is really little else you can do until you get the photo out of the camera and into a computer.
> ...



I wonder if they will sell this in china since facebook is blocked by the great firewall of china...


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## scottburgess (Feb 26, 2014)

wickidwombat said:


> I wonder if they will sell this in china since facebook is blocked by the great firewall of china...


They have their own version, I believe: "Red Star Firewallbook." :


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## sanj (Mar 3, 2014)

My daughter refuses to touch my Fuji XE and prefers her Iphone MUCH more.


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## wickidwombat (Mar 4, 2014)

scottburgess said:


> wickidwombat said:
> 
> 
> > I wonder if they will sell this in china since facebook is blocked by the great firewall of china...
> ...



nah it will be the wechat edition


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## mkabi (Mar 16, 2014)

I dont' think the compact digital camera market will disappear altogether.

As great as a smartphone is at being an all around solution, that there may become the problem... its an expensive all around solution that can be stolen.

I think they are thinking up ways to barcode or scan in your debit cards and credit cards now...

Hey, think about going abroad with just a smartphone... someone steals it, and even though its biometrically locked or password protected, someone can easily erase everything on that phone and use it for their own use. But that leaves you stuck, going to your own nations embassy to get your id, etc. back.


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## Diko (Sep 10, 2014)

scottburgess said:


> ...
> Don't feel bad, it took me almost five minutes to figure this out. The dip***t who created this chart should be spanked IMO. The natural tendency is to compare the rings against each other, which is impossible without a hand calculator. Simple stacked bar graphs would have been much easier to compare visually.
> 
> I also would not place a lot of confidence in these projections as they sound overly optimistic. Consider the source: a semiconductor company. Something fishy in the fish market? Perhaps.


You could be right. We'll see that. There are still billions of people NOT hooked on FB. And besides it all depends on the trend setters and at the moment the ONLY one I can think of is SONY. CANON IMO is already a follower in the trends business and a leader (not for long, I guess) in the sales.


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## AcutancePhotography (Sep 10, 2014)

Don Haines said:


> dstppy said:
> 
> 
> > Smart phones are taking over because people can't be bothered.
> ...



http://newcameranews.com/2014/09/03/leaked-nikon-promises-photokina-surprise/


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## Diko (Sep 10, 2014)

ROFL. I have no idea who writes those.... but the news there are brilliant!


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## Skatol (Sep 10, 2014)

AcutancePhotography said:


> Don Haines said:
> 
> 
> > dstppy said:
> ...


Just lost another hour of work due to this link....THANKS!!!!


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## unfocused (Sep 10, 2014)

And then there is this: http://newcameranews.com/2014/08/21/canon-threatens-release-of-eos-m3/


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## moreorless (Sep 10, 2014)

I would actually argue that besides competition from phones a lot of the reason why the compact market was in trouble was because competition had driven prices for basic compacts so low that profit margins were limited even if sales were high. You look back 15 years and pretty basic compacts by todays standards were selling for $400+.

The big mistake that I think was made in the compact market that left it open to phones was IMHO sticking to relatively small sensors for too long, even high end compacts were stuck with 1/1.7' sensors for god knows how many years. Sticking with smaller sensors did mean that zoom ranges could increase but I'd argue that for the majority a 24-100mmish range is really all they need. Increasing sensor size sooner would have gotten more people used to higher quality phones would struggle to equal.

The future is I'd guess a move towards larger sensored more expensive compacts but I think its now much more of an uphill struggle as your having to user users back.


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## scyrene (Sep 10, 2014)

Don Haines said:


> dstppy said:
> 
> 
> > Smart phones are taking over because people can't be bothered.
> ...



That's what transparent toasters are for! http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004H62AQA



And call me an old cynic, but most images don't warrant more than a glance. The higher up the scale you go, the more (some photographers at least) feel the need to add a load of narrative to justify banality. Most photos, for most people (I observe) are valuable primarily in their subject matter. Which is fine. Banality is fine too. Just don't pretend it's actually profundity.


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## unfocused (Sep 10, 2014)

moreorless said:


> I would actually argue that besides competition from phones a lot of the reason why the compact market was in trouble was because competition had driven prices for basic compacts so low that profit margins were limited even if sales were high. You look back 15 years and pretty basic compacts by todays standards were selling for $400+.
> 
> The big mistake that I think was made in the compact market that left it open to phones was IMHO sticking to relatively small sensors for too long, even high end compacts were stuck with 1/1.7' sensors for god knows how many years. Sticking with smaller sensors did mean that zoom ranges could increase but I'd argue that for the majority a 24-100mmish range is really all they need. Increasing sensor size sooner would have gotten more people used to higher quality phones would struggle to equal.
> 
> The future is I'd guess a move towards larger sensored more expensive compacts but I think its now much more of an uphill struggle as your having to user users back.



I don't really think so. Everyone carries a phone with them at all times. So, the convenience of having a phone that takes pictures was just too great for camera manufacturers to compete with.

The small sensors of compacts are frankly quite impressive, so I don't think most people using a phone as a camera would have changed their habits for a larger sensor (and a larger body) camera. 

Finally, the nail in the coffin has been social media and wifi. Camera manufacturers were slow to adapt to the realities of wireless posting and still don't have the most intuitive designs. The slow adoption of touchscreen and the difficulty of typing on a camera haven't helped either.

Neuro might make fun of the Facebook button on the Canon, but frankly that's what a lot of people want and expect -- the ability to upload an image to their Facebook page with a single button.

All manufacturers, including Canon, have been embarrassingly slow in adapting to the new realities. People whine about esoteric issues like dynamic range, but here we are in 2014 and it sounds like the 7DII won't even have an integrated touch screen and wifi, much less an interface that allows users to access Photoshop's new Ipad app from their cameras, do some quick edits and post pictures straight from the camera.


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## Diko (Sep 10, 2014)

unfocused said:


> moreorless said:
> 
> 
> > I would actually argue that besides competition from phones a lot of the reason why the compact market was in trouble was because competition had driven prices for basic compacts so low that profit margins were limited even if sales were high. You look back 15 years and pretty basic compacts by todays standards were selling for $400+.
> ...


 The trend for bigger sensor is obvious already. And bigger sensor on MILC is not such a bad idea. That means NOT that big bodies at all. 

The talk of a SONY powered (who else...!?!) CMOS MILC is already circulating the internet. And I'll be damned if I don't buy one of those one day when the technology is enough mature so devices are not slow as an old lady while the prices are as high as a NBA MVP.

The point is that the death of DSLR is inevitable in 10 years at most. That time is needed for tech to get smaller (e.g. autofocus mechanism), better (EVF with wider DR), and new concepts like DPAF to be invented. In 10 years MILC will come as a winner. 

Give it 20 at most if the big players decide to get out every $ possible out of the MF DSLR class. You know first there will be 1.6 crop MF... then a true MF will appear. Someone even may dare to get 7x7 DSLR... but that aside from fashion don't see a true application anywhere else.... at all.

So what do you think of my daredreaming?


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## AcutancePhotography (Sep 11, 2014)

Diko said:


> ROFL. I have no idea who writes those.... but the news there are brilliant!



NewCameraNews is the only legitimate photography news website. They are not afraid to tell the real truth. ;D


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## moreorless (Sep 11, 2014)

unfocused said:


> moreorless said:
> 
> 
> > I would actually argue that besides competition from phones a lot of the reason why the compact market was in trouble was because competition had driven prices for basic compacts so low that profit margins were limited even if sales were high. You look back 15 years and pretty basic compacts by todays standards were selling for $400+.
> ...



I'd agree that a lot of the market loss to phones was inevitable but I think that loss was made worse by sticking to smaller sensors for so long. Greater connectivity maybe a plus but is still always going to be playing catchup to phones, larger sensors earlier could have gotten people used to greater quality.

Your talking vastly different markets between than powershot at the 7D mk2, I don't think connectivity is a massive issue with the latter.


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