Endangered digital compacts. After a not too long season of glory, they are under siege by the omnivorous fury of a particularly voracious species: smartphones. After all, taking a picture has never been easier. Just take your cell phone out of your pocket. With a mid-range device, you already get a more than acceptable resolution for sharing the image on social networks. And this was enough to put the once indispensable and economic digital technologies into oblivion.
Global sales plunged 42 percent in the first five months of 2013, according to data from the Tokyo Camera Manufacturers Association, published by the Wall Street Journal. Companies are desperately trying to adapt to a world where customers reward the immediacy and the social factor of smartphones, driven by the Instagram trend, the application that offers myriads of filters to share your photos online.
These changes have forced major companies in the industry, including Fujifilm and Panasonic, to cut product lines and adapt their offerings. And someone is already choosing to focus only on the high end.
The global compact market could shrink to 102 million units this year. In 2010 they were 144 million. And this happens, paradoxically, when the number of photos taken explodes: Fujifilm estimates that 1,6 trillion photos are taken every year with smartphones, compact digital cameras and other devices. In 2000 it was "only" 100 billion.
And while all products are equipped with wi-fi connectivity, the digital ones remain without connection: only one out of 6 this year will be sold with the possibility of connecting to the Internet, according to the American research center IDC. On the other hand, manufacturers are pushing expensive cameras with zoom beyond 10x and with more powerful sensors, capable of offering good low light performance.
Last month Sony showed its intention to focus on high-end products with the introduction of an improved version of its best-equipped compact. The RX1R and its predecessor, the RX1, manage to squeeze the most powerful sensor on the market into a small space. Both models cost $2800. Sony also lets it be known that the average selling price of its digital cameras grew by more than 20 percent in the first quarter of 2013. As if to say: the more they cost, the easier it is to sell them. Not surprisingly, the reflex market - dominated by Canon and Nikon - has never been so thriving.
