Decline of the camera industry accelerated by the Covid pandemic

The big crash in the camera industry started ten years ago following the success of the first modern-era smartphones. As a direct result of the move to smartphones, the industry sold 93 per cent fewer cameras in 2020 than it had done a decade previously, with the once-mighty point-and-shoot segment annihilated by the lighter and ubiquitous phone camera.

The Covid pandemic has accelerated the downward trend in the past year, with a fall in sales from 14.6m in 2019 to only 8.7m.

According to this article in Lensvid, the pandemic has negatively impacted sales because of a range of factors, including less work for professionals, no vacations, rising prices of equipment, and supply chain problems. There is also the psychological factor of lockdown restrictions reducing the appetite for new gear among amateur photographers.

In conclusion, the article says that:

“Even in a very optimistic scenario where the pandemic will be mostly behind us by the end of the year, we can’t see a significant recovery of the market, certainly not to the levels of the 2019 market (which as we have seen were already quite low).

“What does this mean for the industry, well, prices will continue to stay high, manufacturers will have less money to spend on R&D, and companies struggling to survive even before the pandemic might not survive or have to sell, just like Olympus did with its Imaging business which is now part of JIP.’



13 COMMENTS

  1. I think the question is if we see substantial innovations in the next few years. 60 or 70 MP will not suffice and 8k will not be a deal breaker either. Just because hardly anybody needs it let alone the fact that you would have to invest heavily into periphery.

    After the beginning of the digital turn, we saw in quite regular innovation circles (1) affordable consumer cameras, (2) capable SLR cameras working with lenses from the film era, (3) the rise of full frame, (4) so-called mirrorless cameras with entirely new lenses. Now, the market seems (over-) saturated, and there are plenty of second-hand cameras from amateurs who always bought the latest and the greatest so far. It seems they are slowing down their speed of exchanging gear. Just because any two year old camera is still great.

    Maybe, the next big thing is: film photography…

    • Film camera sales appear to be steady … especially Leica M models and particularly the M3 … which now regularly sells for in excess of £1000. Just c. 226000 M3 cameras were manufactured over 13 years from 1954 to 1966 … and it’s amazing that demand exceeds supply some 55 years after production ceased. If you can find a good example of an M3, it may well hold its value for another 50 years … long after its much younger digital M siblings’ sensors, mother boards, and monitors have ceased to be functional and replaceable. “If you’re a film devotee … buy an M3”

      • Absolutely right, Dunk. The M3 was and is a classic. If any Leica photographer can get one in good condition or has a restored camera, they should hold onto it forever. It will well outlast any of today’s digital models. Generally, all film Leicas of whatever vintage will hold their value over time. My particular interest is in the LTM models, which are not for everyone, but they do hold their value, particularly the early black and nickel models made between 1925 and 1935. Those earliest models have in fact appreciated considerably in recent times .

        William

  2. Hi Mike,
    may be it is a good thing to slow down 🙂 It might lead to innovative new products when options are constrained due to various factors.
    Best
    Kannan

    • Well, I suppose Leica is in a relatively good position and probably hasn’t seen a dramatic decline in customers this past year. As William says, also, the industry had expanded rapidly in the early digital years and I suspect a large part of that would have been the simpler consumer cameras which were supplanted by the smartphone. With luck, the industry will consolidate and keep the innovation flowing.

  3. Most other industries suffering a 93% decline would cease to exist. Cameras enjoyed a huge upswing in sales after the ‘digital turn’ and to an extent they are returning to ‘normal’. The new normal is the smartphone which for over 90% of families has replaced ‘the camera’, as it was formerly known, as in ‘did you remember to pack THE camera?’ Families are happy with this as they can now send their own personal postcards while they are on holiday.

    For the ‘I am a serious photographer’ types there are still plenty of options, but these are likely to get more and more expensive as sales decline further. Leica has decided to take the ‘high road’ with a market of ‘high net worth’ individuals, but it may need to serve the ‘mittelstand’ as well. Leica may, indeed, be the company with the best strategy as it has not attempted to capture the mass market, although it has a foot in that via the Huawei deal.

    It is hard to forecast what the market will be like 10 years from now, but it may consist of fewer companies, producing fewer models. Then again there may be a brave new change along the way which will pick the whole thing up again. Is there a Tesla type market disruptor on the horizon in the camera market?

    William

    • Agree William. One can expect innovative product lines due to limitations. Sustainable growth model might become the norm for most industries in the future and this would have impact on consumer products. What kind of effect this would bring to product lines, we need to wait and see !

    • I think, William, that Leica is already the Tesla of the camera market, but so long as it continues to walk with Panasonic and give us lower-class buyers things like the D-Lux series, I’ll be happy.

      • I’m inclined to agree with you John. Co-productions, like the Pana-Leicas, serve an important segment of serious amateur photographers.

    • You still can’t see the screen on a smartphone in bright light outdoors ( no viewfinder) and you can’t control the exposure accurately just by touching the area you want exposed on a smartphone. It’s either too dark or too light. Until they fix these things the smartphone has certainly NOT replaced the camera. Also the ergonomics of holding a phone while taking a picture is still much like holding a bar of soap or chocolate.Do you want to make photographs or take selfies?

      • I agree fully with this and it’s why, until recently, I have avoided using a smartphone for anything other than emergencies.

        However, during the various lockdowns I have stopped carrying a camera everywhere as I once did. There didn’t seem much point when there is nowhere to go. So I have been using the smartphone as my carry around camera and have been impressed with the results. But the haptics are terrible, as you say.

      • “..you can’t control the exposure accurately just by touching the area you want exposed on a smartphone..”

        I have only an iPhone (..I’ve never used an Android, or any make other than Apple..) so I can’t say how this works on other phones, but on any iPhone, if you touch – as you say – the area you want in sharp focus, you’ll then see a small (yellow?) ‘Sun’ symbol alongside it, and if you slide that ‘Sun’ (brightness) symbol upwards, the photo becomes brighter, and if you slide downwards it gets darker. Simples.

        There are also MANY downloadable iPhone apps, such as ..Darn! ..updated the phone, so now I need to update a whole set of photo apps, and so I can’t right now suggest one ..but there are apps which give you access to shutter speeds and apertures on your phone.

        I do carry a couple of ‘Moment’-brand tiny ancillary bayonet-mount lenses which clip onto a ‘Moment’-brand iPhone case, so I can switch to a super-wide (18mm equivalent) or anamorphic (‘CinemaScope’) lens (..the latter for widescreen video..) in just seconds: they clip onto the slim phone case with a 90º twist.

        As my preferred stills angle-of-view is generally 21mm (yes, I know; that’s ‘focal length’ not ‘angle-of-view’, but you know what I mean!) so the 18mm lens on my phone gives pretty much the same view as my camera ..except that it sits flat in my jacket’s inside pocket, weighs next to nothing, and the only thing it doesn’t do is blur away backgrounds. Er, but I do have a few Mac programs to do that…

      • Hi Stephen
        I don’t know which smartphone you have, but since the iphone X (3 years ago? 4?) I’ve been able to see the screen outdoors in even the brightest light – as David says, exposure is completely under your control, but if you don’t bother then it does the work of gentle HDR in contrasty light to make the picture look like you see with your eyes (something that no camera can do – you need to revert to LR). Using Portrait mode it’s easy to blur backgrounds.

        When the iPhone 12 arrived my son and I did some experiments with RAW shooting, and an A3 print is perfectly within reach.

        I don’t much like shooting with a phone, and I do like shooting with a camera, and I like to be able to print bigger than A3, but I do take images with the phone quite often, and IMHO they are very very very good, certainly a step up from any of the point and shoot cameras available 3 or 4 years ago.

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