A couple of weeks
ago, CEA's statistic dynamic duo, Steve Koenig and Shawn DuBravac, presented
their annual holiday sales forecast for the U.S. market. Not surprisingly, the
pair predicted tablets would be the top holiday technology gifts for the second
year in a row.
What was more
surprising was the pair's pessimistic forecast for digital cameras and
especially camcorders.
DTC has already
forecasted severe downturn in sales, but the CEA statistical duo noted 2012 U.S.
holiday sales for digital cameras would drop 7.6 percent, and a massive 51
percent fall off for camcorders.
These precipitous
sales forecasts are far worse than CEA's mid-year forecast. In July, just four months
ago, CEA projected sales of digital cameras would be flat for 2012 compared to
last year, and camcorders would fall "only" 24 percent compared to
2011.
Even as digital
cameras, and especially smartphones, get better and better at recording video,
the camcorder market looks unsalvageable, likely to settle into a low
volume/high profit high-end product niche similar to digital SLRs or high-end audio.
But, apropos to the
season, digital cameras may be resurrected thanks to its mortal enemy, the
smartphone.
Snapshot savior?
The same week Steve
and Shawn presented their digital imaging projections, Samsung officially
started selling a potential digital imaging game-changer: its smartphone-like
Galaxy Camera.
Three functions make
a smartphone a more desirable digital camera to most consumers:
• ubiquitousness; you
always have it
• Internet
connectivity to instantly share and post snapshots
• a powerful
processor to improve speed and image quality
• it does a lot more
than take photos
Essentially a
smartphone/digital camera hybrid, the Galaxy Camera answers two of these
desires. The Galaxy Camera runs the latest Android operating system (4.1 Jelly
Bean), features a 4.8-inch screen with a 1.4 quad core processor, and provides
3G/4G connectivity for photo sharing. You may not always have it, but the
Galaxy Camera has a smartphone's picture processing power, connectivity to
share, and because it runs Android Jelly Bean is actually a small (albeit fat)
tablet.
We'll soon know
whether or not the Galaxy Camera connects with consumers, who still may not
want to carry two imaging devices or pay for additional cellular connectivity,
regardless of the second device's capabilities.
Who else wants to play?
More importantly,
it's hard to know if the Galaxy Camera can be imitated.
Building an Android
camera is certainly doable – Android is an open OS designed by Google to let
anyone play.
But is it possible for
another camera maker to successfully make one?
One problem for other
potential Android camera makers is lack of Android experience. Only one other
leading camera maker – Sony – also makes smartphones and PCs and, therefore,
has any experience with an operating system.
To create an Android
camera of their own, other leading digicam vendors such as Canon, Nikon and
Fuji would be forced to wander around an unfamiliar technology neighborhood.
The success of the Samsung Galaxy Camera may force them to; its
failure may be a relief to an industry ready to concentrate instead on
higher-margin compact system models.
Everyone else's lack
of Android inexperience is good news in the short term for Samsung – it'll
likely have the Android camera market to itself for a bit. But a lack of other
Android cameras could be bad news for the digital camera industry in the long
run as consumers continue to flock to that other OS-centric device in their
pocket to snap snapshots.
