The iPhone 4S sports a better digital camera than some of the top point and shoot digital cameras leading the market only a short while ago. And with the advent of smartphones featuring cameras of near-professional quality, the incentive to purchase a separate point and shoot digital camera is rapidly diminishing for most consumers.
“The cell-phone camera is becoming more accepted as the primary camera,” Pamela Tufegdzic, an analyst at research firm IHS Inc., tells Bloomberg. “Smartphones are cannibalizing the point-and- shoot, digital-still camera market.”
This week, Bloomberg published a new chart showing that digital camera shipments are expected to fall 4.3 percent this year to 115.2 million units. The news organization says that’s the lowest level since 2009, according to data from IHS.
The primary reason for that dip? The surge in smartphone shipments, which is expected to climb 35% to 642 million units this year.
According to Thursday’s report from Bloomberg, Nikon, Canon, Sony and Olympus Corp. are all seeing fewer shipments despite their reputation for making high quality products.
Their biggest problem, without question, is facing competition from smartphones which are rapidly developing cameras comparable in quality to those made by the digital photography giants of our time.
