"Sandwich layer" is a difficult card machine.

Double squeeze of SLR and smartphone global shipments plummet

The number of photo shoots in the world is soaring. It is estimated that the number has risen from 100 billion to 1.6 trillion in the past 10 years or so. However, when you press the shutter more and more, do you notice the guy in your hand, the smartphone, the digital camera, or the other device?

Most people answer is smartphones. and the scenery of MP3, MP4 music player, the advent of smartphones, so that digital cameras, especially card machine off the "rice bowl." The Tokyo Camera Imaging Association data show that 2013 years ago five months, card camera global shipments plunged 42%. This is perhaps another industry transformation of the cusp.

The card machine becomes the absolute supporting actor

Advertising reflects the market demand for warm and cold.

Once in the TV screen for Canon Ixus card machine Series "writhing" Karen Mok-if you pay attention to her, "goddess" long time no see. This is because, since March this year, the canon and Karen Mok did not renew.

Now, in the digital product vane of Shanghai Xujiahui area, but also do a large advertising is a micro-single product NX300, "fast capture, quick to share" become eye-catching advertising language.

August 26, into the Xujiahui in the Broadway, the Pacific and other digital plaza, the reporter found, compared with a few years ago, the card machine sales counter in the area has shrunk by at least half. SLR camera is the main product of all camera sellers, the card camera is just run. Not many customers come to patronize the card machine.

"There are micro-single, SLR ' civilian ', under the smart phone ' camera ', mezzanine card machine is difficult to have a market. A store owner said that he could sell twenty or thirty units a day, and now it's "not going to sell".

One consumer believes that, in the same budget and function, choose a card machine, rather than directly choose a camera powerful smartphone. If you really need photography, you will buy an SLR.

Reporters noted that the sale of card machine brands for Canon, Nikon, followed by Samsung, Sony, the rest of the brand is very rare. A dealer told reporters that Canon and Nikon are focused on the camera business, the rest of the brand because of other business, in the card machine market downturn in the current, have reduced the card machine product line. Olympus and other brands of card machines are simply out of the Chinese market.

According to Japanese media reports, Olympus, the world's seventh-ranked photographic equipment company, decided this May to stop its digital camera factory in Guangdong, China. In the field of digital cameras, Olympus will focus on profitable micro-cameras and highly functional card cameras, while withdrawing from the low price card camera market, where sales are shrinking rapidly.

Compared with the Japanese and Korean brands, the situation of domestic brands is even worse, the market share is only about 10% of the domestic brands almost all collapse. Lenovo back in 2008 to exit the digital camera market, Tsinghua Violet, founder and so on earlier downsizing business, now only the remaining Patriots, BenQ, TCL. But BenQ is now only a brand presence, and its digital camera research and manufacturing business has been sold; "Brace for the scene" is the Patriot, in the camera business loss for 6 years, turned into a telephoto market.

The decline of the card machine market is only the epitome of the shrinking of the entire camera industry. International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that the global digital camera market could shrink to 102 million this year, about 144 million in the 2010 peak. The biggest downside is the "shoot" sector, which will fall to 80 million this year and three years ago to 132 million.

Canon has lowered its camera sales target twice in the past three months. Companies such as Fuji, Panasonic and Sony have opted to focus on more high-end cameras.

"Everyone in this industry realizes that the market is changing and the question is what we can do about it," he said. "Fuji Film vice President Tanaka said.

The future: Social, GPS, filters

Despite the downturn in the card machine market, consumers still have great expectations for the concept of "card machine" in a broad sense, that is, portable digital cameras.

In the readership survey, nearly half of the readers still say that the card machine has its existence. "The size of the card, the quality of the SLR, must be handy in the pocket, not in the camera bag!" Weibo Netizen @mo a message said.

Indeed, compared to mobile phones, card machine Big zoom, night scene mode, high-speed burst and other functions can still not be replaced. Some netizens pointed out that the premise must be a card machine sensors than mobile phones, can be in the light of the situation to take better quality photos. In addition, they expect more powerful features, including social sharing, GPS positioning, filter effects, and more.

In fact, there are also some cards on the market with Wi-Fi sharing functions, such as Samsung DV300F, Canon Ixus, such as the HS. Camera makers are also aware of the consumer's demand, "our goal is to work with smartphones, not competition." "Songping, who is in charge of Canon card business, said that Canon launched the palm-shaped, square-shaped idiot machine earlier this year PowerShot N, which can easily send photos to smartphones and allow users to modify original photos with various filters in the creative photography feature."

But compared to many consumer electronics Wi-Fi networking has become "standard", the camera is still "heterogeneous", IDC data show that this year, the number of digital cameras shipped only 1/6 Wi-Fi features.

In the Chinese market, a distributor told reporters that Wi-Fi function of the camera is not many, and the same model, with Wi-Fi price than no Wi-Fi cost hundreds of yuan, they generally do not recommend consumers to buy such cameras, the proposed use of cheaper Wi-Fi storage cards to upload photos to the phone.

But the reporters found that the social sharing of these cameras only provided links to foreign social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, with little access to micro-blogs, micro-letters, Renren and so on, not for Chinese users.

Channel people believe that in the future they will focus on several brands, more focus on market segments to meet personalized needs. The dealer told reporters, "Fuji now only sell in China, to meet consumer demand for film." Casio only do ' self-portrait artifact ', built-in a variety of filter effects, to meet the needs of girls beauty. These two prices are not low, but they sell very well. ”

Extended Reading

Sony's answer

September 5, Sony in Berlin, Germany, released two camera camera-Sony QX100 and QX10, people think that compared to Xperia Z1 mobile phones, they are the real role of the Conference, which can be seen as Sony's "card machine withered" to give the ultimate answer.

The main responsibility for QX10 and QX100 is to turn an ordinary smartphone into a professional photo-taking smartphone with an "SLR", which can be applied to a variety of smartphones and tablets on the Android or iOS platform.

As long as the mobile phone installed Sony playmemories Mobile applications, and paired successfully, people can achieve "mobile phone camera remote control", so as to achieve a variety of invincible self-portraits, macro and other remote control and "split" shooting mode.

Among them, the official price of QX10 about 1500 yuan, similar to the card machine, still in the consumer can accept the range, but the performance is more powerful.