topic Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market in General Discussion

Canon CEO expects shrinking market

John_SD — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 16:58:43 GMT

Just read an interesting article in Digital Camera World. Canon's CEO says that smartphones will continue to decimate the camera market and offers a bleak assessment of the future. Personally, I think he is overly optimistic.

"The digital camera market will continue to fall for the next two years before it hits rock bottom, at which time it could have shrunk by almost half. That's the bleak forecast from Canon CEO, Fujio Mitarai."

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

RobertTheFat — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 17:10:51 GMT

@John_SD wrote:
Just read an interesting article in Digital Camera World. Canon's CEO says that smartphones will continue to decimate the camera market and offers a bleak assessment of the future. Personally, I think he is overly optimistic.

"The digital camera market will continue to fall for the next two years before it hits rock bottom, at which time it could have shrunk by almost half. That's the bleak forecast from Canon CEO, Fujio Mitarai."

I'm not sure I'd see it quite the way he does. I might try to define a smartphone as an entry-level camera that can get people hooked on photography and adjust my marketing pitches (and my product lines) accordingly.

Does Canon make smartphones, or is that industry totally controlled by China and Korea?

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

John_SD — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 17:42:07 GMT

@RobertTheFat wrote:

I'm not sure I'd see it quite the way he does. I might try to define a smartphone as an entry-level camera that can get people hooked on photography and adjust my marketing pitches (and my product lines) accordingly.

Does Canon make smartphones, or is that industry totally controlled by China and Korea?

I am not aware of any Canon-made smartphone. The CEO's concerns seem well-founded to me. He indicates that there is scant evidence of any meaningful numbers of new adopters coming in to the market in the past several years. He said that even mirrorless isn't going to help much, because most of those sales are to existing pros and enthusiasts. Very few new adopters and that spells trouble when you are looking at market growth. He attributes the slide in numbers to people being satisfied with the increasingly better snapshots they are able to capture on their phones. That point seems reasonable enough to me.

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

Waddizzle — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 20:58:53 GMT

I am not worried. I am all set for years to come.

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

wq9nsc — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 23:32:07 GMT

I suspect this will greatly reduce the amount of new R&D funds going into further advancing mirrorless cameras given his belief in a market that isn't going to be large enough to make the case for continuing large expenditures. Canon, like others, will be investing in markets that they believe offer acceptable growth. As the market continues to mature and shink, advances in performance will slow.

Just as the majority of the population is happy with low bit rate audio through poor quality earbuds, they are equally happy with the images that can be captured by current phones. As consumer products, stand alone cameras will soon join AM table radios, "landline" phones, and other once popular consumer products as a niche product.

Rodger

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

Tronhard — Tue, 29 Jan 2019 00:23:03 GMT

I can see smartphones impinging on cameras the don't offer major telephoto capability, but it will be a while before a smartphone can replace the quality I can get from a FF sensor with a 600mm lens attached. I recognize that is a distinct minority. Also, I think we are looking at a generation of photographers who (as a generalization) are happy to keep their images on line in some form or other - via social media or web-based image banks, looking at them via some kind of media device. I sense that the volume of larger, high quality images going to print is reducing amongst the masses. I think there will always be a market amongst professionals and photography enthusiasts (there still is for film), but the days when we all lugged around a camra, especially a compact piont and shoot, are dying.

That said, what I fail to see in the camera market is the kind of app "smarts" that are making phones prouduce better and better images. Basically I still see a smartphone's photographic ability as based on a lens, sensor and processor (just like a camera) with apps on top of them to generate output. Now the lens and sensor are still extremely tiny, and getting better, but the real progress is being done in the processing of the images generated by those two elements - and they are making amazing strides. I am seeing companies like Fujifilm and Sony incorporate limited versions of these features into their cameras, but I ask what we could get if the camera companies really got on board with those same features that generate amazing phone output. Heaven knows it's hard enough to get Canon and Nkon (amongst others) to give us firmware fixes for flaws, so maybe I am asking for the moon here, but I sense that the traditional camera market is shifting, and the gear makers are not.

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

Waddizzle — Tue, 29 Jan 2019 00:34:15 GMT

@John_SD wrote:
@RobertTheFat wrote:

I'm not sure I'd see it quite the way he does. I might try to define a smartphone as an entry-level camera that can get people hooked on photography and adjust my marketing pitches (and my product lines) accordingly.

Does Canon make smartphones, or is that industry totally controlled by China and Korea?
I am not aware of any Canon-made smartphone. The CEO's concerns seem well-founded to me. He indicates that there is scant evidence of any meaningful numbers of new adopters coming in to the market in the past several years. He said that even mirrorless isn't going to help much, because most of those sales are to existing pros and enthusiasts. Very few new adopters and that spells trouble when you are looking at market growth. He attributes the slide in numbers to people being satisfied with the increasingly better snapshots they are able to capture on their phones. That point seems reasonable enough to me.

Unfortunately, the trade-off between convenience and image quality favors the physical convenience of a smartphone. But, there are outside factors driving the popularity of smartphones.

When I attend an NBA game at MSG, I cannot bring my DSLR, but I am welcome to bring in a smartphone. When I go to see a PGA Tour event, I cannot bring my DSLR, but I am allowed to bring a smartphone to most events. When I board a plane for a vacation trip, I can bring my DSLR, but it usually costs me extra baggage fees. Get the idea.

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

ebiggs1 — Tue, 29 Jan 2019 21:33:40 GMT

IMHO, camera makes have defeated themselves for resisting to make a entry level DSLR act more like a smartphone. All the new buyers are kids that grew up using a smartphone. They want the DSLR to be similar. Don't believe me? Just hand your camera to a teenager. The first thing they do is try to view it like a smartphone and work the menus like a smartphone.

Now add the fact smartphone cameras have gotten way better but the DSLR has only got a little better in the last few years. The full on pro market is probably safe for a long while.

Sometimes companies get so big they don't even know their own market. How about asking, "What do you expect or want in a new Rebel?" Why ask about the Rebel line? Because the P&S cameras are done, you're not bringing them back even if they did the super dishes.

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

Tronhard — Tue, 29 Jan 2019 22:04:28 GMT

I certainly agree with much of what Ebiggs says. The interface of conventional cameras has stayed on a menu-driven system from back in the last century. I also see users looking through the LCD screen when they would be more successful using the viewfinder, but they don't make that leap.

Still in a way the smartphone has revolutionized photography much like the Box Brownie did just over a century ago. People now take images to document their lives on electronic devices and social media that do not demand super high end resolution. The smartphone combined with such devices feeds into our innate desres to communicate, engage socially, to document our existance and in many cases to be given approval - everyone wants their "15 seconds of fame", and it's addictive...

We did all that before, but to a lesser extent through point and shoot cameras, but now the phone is and integral part of the new communications landscape, whiere an image is seamlessly captured, processed and transmitted in real time without having to lug around a bunch of devices. There is no answer to that all-in-one solution that has really come from conventional camera manufacturers and thus they have become irrelevent to a major part of their traditional marketspace.

I agree that the prosumer and professional markets will still exist - probably that is where Canon are getting their 5 million sales value from, but the danger is that as the market shrinks then (as implied in the comment about refocusing on commercial markets) R&D will also, and the technology will stagnate. I also suspect that many of today's players will drop out of the business completely. Both those results would be a great pity, but are a fairly likely scenario.

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

RobertTheFat — Wed, 30 Jan 2019 04:20:44 GMT

A fact worth noting is that smart phones have become much larger over the past few years. One effect has been to considerably reduce the size difference between a smart phone and a P&S camera. Or to put it another way, there wouldn't be all that much difference between a phone that can behave as a camera and a camera that could behave as a phone. The latter would have to be capable of Internet access, of course, but that's no longer much of a stretch. Maybe the P&S camera could be saved from oblivion by such a transformation. At a minimum, it might spare this forum from the steady stream of "I can't get my camera to send my pictures to my phone" complaints.

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

ebiggs1 — Wed, 30 Jan 2019 14:28:06 GMT

I agree that the prosumer and professional markets will still exist ..."

One caveat. The same teenagers will become the future professionals. Are you paying attention Canon? You didn't with the P&S market. Perhaps you have learned your lesson! Perhaps not! We'll see.

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

RobertTheFat — Wed, 30 Jan 2019 20:04:19 GMT

@ebiggs1 wrote:
I agree that the prosumer and professional markets will still exist ..."

One caveat. The same teenagers will become the future professionals. Are you paying attention Canon? You didn't with the P&S market. Perhaps you have learned your lesson! Perhaps not! We'll see.

What should Canon have done differently in the P&S market? I'm not trying to be argumentative. I haven't paid much attention to the P&S market since my wife and I switched to DSLRs twelve years ago, so I'm pretty much ignorant of how it's developed. (Except, of course, the fact that it has been invaded by increasingly capable cell phones.)

But my daughter, who turned out to have a talent for child photography while her kids were growing up, has used a succession of Canon P&Ses with which she has been very happy. OTOH, there's this: She works in her sister-in-law's florist shop in Philadelphia. A few months ago they were looking for a better camera to do some marketing photography, so I gave her one of my old 7D's. I'm not sure she's even tried it, but it's reported that others in the shop (none of them serious photographers, AFAIK) who have used it were impressed with its capability, compared to what they were used to.

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

ebiggs1 — Wed, 30 Jan 2019 22:16:48 GMT

Simple, it needs to work like an iphone. It needs to have wi-fi that actually works. You have kids that are growing up and they don't know a world without iphones. Then Canon puts this thing that is totally different in operation to what they like to use and you expect it to be a hit. Nada, not gonna happen and it hasn't.

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

Waddizzle — Thu, 31 Jan 2019 02:46:13 GMT

@ebiggs1 wrote:
Simple, it needs to work like an iphone. It needs to have wi-fi that actually works. You have kids that are growing up and they don't know a world without iphones. Then Canon puts this thing that is totally different in operation to what they like to use and you expect it to be a hit. Nada, not gonna happen and it hasn't.

The Bluetooth enabled bodies seem to have cured the Wi-Fi setup problems. Bluetooth is used to automatically configure Wi-Fi with a capable smart device.

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

altco — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 10:17:09 GMT

To me it seems that the phone manufacturers are more willing to squeeze the last piece of performance from the smaller sensors, while the camera manufacturers are more willing to cripple the entry level bodies in order to avoid jeopardizing the market for the more expensive cameras and lenses.
In a lot of situations, a beginner with a $400 entry level kit shooting at ISO6400 and f/4.4 does not have much advantage over a $200 phone at ISO1600 and f/2.2.

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

ebiggs1 — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 15:40:49 GMT

"...entry level kit shooting at ISO6400 and f/4.4 does not have much advantage..."

A DSLR always has the advantage over a smartphone. The difference is in how you intend to use the result. Showing friends your shots by letting them look at your phone or at your FB page doesn't take much of a camera. That is how the majority of people especially young folks want to do. Canon and the others really ignored this market segment. They are now paying the price for that mistake.

The very same technology except for making a phone call can be and should have been integrated in the P&S camera models. Even in the low and mid-level DSLR's.

I might add that me and many others I know warned Canon about this trend, 10 years ago, and it like most of the other 'suggestions' made, fell on deaf ears.

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

John_SD — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 18:49:32 GMT

@altco wrote:
In a lot of situations, a beginner with a $400 entry level kit shooting at ISO6400 and f/4.4 does not have much advantage over a $200 phone at ISO1600 and f/2.2.

Unless, of course, that beginner is interested in learning DSLR photography.

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

altco — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 21:08:26 GMT

don't get me wrong, i'm happy to be into the mirrorless boat and Canon had the better deal, but at times i would trade some of the sensor area for a shorter and faster lens.

I guess that the kit lens does not allow me to make this compromise, not due to what i might need as a beginner, but because (1) new lenses are to be bought, (2) reviewers are obsessed with sharpness at the corners, and (3) no other camera manufacturer is doing it

Re: Canon CEO expects shrinking market

ebiggs1 — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 15:31:30 GMT

"Unless, of course, that beginner is interested in learning DSLR photography."

Has nothing to do with that. Nada! They all still have full manual control, P, Tv, Av, etc. if that is what floats your boat. It is the architecture structure and GUI that Canon and the manufacturers screwed up on.