Four the fourth year in a row, LensVid has published its excellent summary of the camera market, upon which we have all come to rely.
Iddo Genuth of LensVid
For today, just a link to the video. All the information is in the video, and it's not too long. News this year, although no surprise, is as bad as any of us feared. Note, however, the kernal of admittedly selfish hope: more of the action in the camera industry is going to be in higher-end and professional products...in other words, just the sorts of things that most interest a lot of us.
Here's LensVid's outstanding chart for this year, if you don't have time for the video.
I'll have more thoughts about this in the days to come, no doubt, but all in good time. Oh, and @LensVid...thanks for this.
Mike
(Thanks to Tom Burke)
Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
Dire thought
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His conclusions are incorrect. If mirrorless sales are static while dslr and compact sales are declining, then mirrorless is increasing its share of the market.
[Hi Mike, that is reflected in the section of the chart marked "Camera Market Overview 2013–2016." --Mike]
Posted by: Mike Fewster | Thursday, 02 March 2017 at 03:52 PM
Two main problems.
1. Old people are dying.
2. Pros are looking at a vastly different market. A market that wants video, not stills. And like it or not, most still photographers can't make the transition (although many delude themselves).
Question for Mike. What has happened to printers sales, as camera sales plummeted? Up? Down? Sideways?
Posted by: c.d.embrey | Thursday, 02 March 2017 at 05:26 PM
Until I saw this video I hadn't grasped the truly calamitous extent of the collapse in compact camera sales. But of course it makes sense; like many others, I'm now using my smartphone to take not just casual pictures but non-casual ones as well. I do have a DSLR outfit, but I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever upgrade it.
Posted by: Tom Burke | Friday, 03 March 2017 at 04:25 AM
Haven't you seen the major flaws in the graphics? It could be used in the Misleading graph Wikipedia article as a proper example how not to do it!
Just some examples:
* In the second subgraph, a bar graph, there are two bars labeled with 22. They have different heights!
* The bubbles at the middle top are scaled by radius, not by area. Therefore, the bigger circles are about 30 per cent too big, relative to the smaller circles inside of them.
* One of the pie charts at the bottom left contains a slice labeled 25 % that is obviously bigger than a quarter of the circle.
* In the bar graph at the bottom right, there is - in the 2016 part - a sub-bar that is labeled 52%, but spans not even closely over half the bar.
When these technical flaws are so dominant, how can you say that the whole thing is an "excellent summary of the camera market"? Who knows what else the guy got wrong!
Posted by: Hans | Friday, 03 March 2017 at 08:52 AM
"literally 98.4% of the consumer cameras sold in 2016 were built into smartphones - only 0.8% were compacts, 0.5% DSLRs, and 0.2% mirrorless."
From: https://petapixel.com/2017/03/03/latest-camera-sales-chart-reveals-death-compact-camera/
It's still over.
Posted by: Homer Office | Friday, 03 March 2017 at 02:39 PM