Smartphones killing demand for point-and-shoot camera sales: ASSOCHAM

by Shrutee K/DNS

Sales of digital cameras with heavy discounts have drastically dropped to mere 35% in the last one year whereas the demand of smart phones has increased by over 120%, reveals an ASSOCHAM recent paper. Smartphone sales almost more than doubled from 44 million units in 2013 to 100 million units in 2016. The volume of smartphone sales is expected to touch 165 million units by 2017, reveals the ASSOCHAM latest study. Affordable smartphones includes handsets in the price of Rs 4000-10,000. This segment accounts for 78 per cent of all smartphone sales equipped with almost similar features which one may get in these sub-Rs 10,000 cameras, and thus the craze of digital cameras have almost vanished, said Mr. D S Rawat, Secretary General ASSOCHAM releasing the paper.

According to the paper, most of the respondents said that the biggest advantage of clicking pictures with smartphones is that they can be shared instantly with your friends and family; a feature which is absent with most of the point and short cameras, adds the paper. About 93% of the customers now prefer Smartphones versus digital camera. The smart phones are becoming the main camera of choice by large number of people and increasingly more consumers are relying on their Smart Phones instead of compact Digital Cameras for both still photos and video capture, adds the ASSOCHAM. Almost 75% of the sales of Mobiles and Tablets came from consumers' residing in Tier-I and Tier –II cities. As per study, personal Computer, MP3 players sales have already started declining, the impact of smartphone and tablet adoption so great that the number of users accessing the Internet through PCs starts falling.

The Digital camera sale has suddenly come down due to large numbers of brands of smart phones at affordable price with multiple buying options. Soaring popularity of smartphones is crushing demand for digital compact cameras amongst the young. The compact camera market is going to keep shrinking in the coming years to come, adds the ASSOCHAM paper. So, the trends shows that a lot of users are buying Smart Phones with built in cameras, with image quality improving with each new generation. Connectivity also plays a big role, since applications available on smart phone make it easy to send images to Social Networking and photo sharing sites for viewing by others”, reveals the paper.

The soaring popularity of smartphones is crushing demand for point-and-shoot cameras, also sharp drop in sales of digital compact cameras marks them as the latest casualty of smartphones as videogame consoles and portable music players also struggle against the all-in-one features. During 2010-11, 75% of total camera sales in India was contributed by these point and shoot cameras, and the rest contributed by SLR cameras. But in 2015, this percentage dropped to just 30%, and it is expected fall by 2017, only 10-15% of overall sales would occur from this segment. The only hope for the digital camera brands in India now will depend on the forthcoming festive season which is expected to revive the demand.

All three major player camera brands, Sony, Canon and Nikon, have roped in Bollywood stars as their brands ambassadors as well as reaching out to the tier II and III cities in a bid to expand their reach. At present, the Indian market is flooded with a range of picture-taking smart phones priced below Rs 5,000/-in tier-II and tier-III cities. There has been a subsequent rise in the demand of smart phones in India in the last one year and one of the reasons behind this growing importance is largely due to the increase in social networking site. Most of the youth in the country share photographs online and upload photographs which has become a new trend in the metros thus giving rise to the need for smart phones, said Mr. Rawat.