Never ending success story of digital cameras

By the end of 2008 about 8.9 million digital cameras to the value of 2 billion Euros will have been sold which is 4% more than in the year 2007. In the year 2009 the number of digital cameras sold is to increase by another 2.3% generating turnover of 2.1 billion Euros. These optimistic prospects were announced today by the German Association for Information Management, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM) which based their findings on data provided by the association for research on consumption (GfK).

The increase in turnover is a slightly adversely affected by a general drop in prices for digital cameras. While in 2006 the average price of a digital camera still amounted to 253 Euros, currently the price is on average just about 230 Euro.

Apart from prices consumer requirements have significantly changed over recent years. Thus, consumers when buying a camera do not only pay attention to the number of pixels of a camera, but also to new features such as computerized face recognition combined with sophisticated automatic focussing, follow-up adaptation of fotos and protection against blurred fotos. Other features such as WLAN-interface, UMTS and additional intelligent features are gaining in importance as well.

Another important trend is that digital cameras in their basic version are more and more competing with mobile phones having integrated high-resolution cameras. At the same time many ambitious layman fotographers change over from simple digital cameras to reflex cameras.

There are more and more digital cameras in German households. This is the finding of a study carried out by the TechConsult market research institute in the course of which 1000 households were interviewed in June this year. According to this study, 54% of all households possess a digital camera, about 7% have a digital reflex camera and about 50% a digital compact camera.

Furthermore, 28% of respondents older than 10 years also watch digital fotos on their tv screen. Another 34% are interested in this. 60% of all users of digital cameras have paper copies made and 47% print out their fotos. 20% of users have foto books made which they designed on their personal computers.

In constrast to the market of digital foto cameras the market for digital camcorders has been slightly contracting. For 2008 turnover is expected to reach 291 million Euros which is 6% less than in 2007.

Whether these optimistic predictions are justified will be demonstrated by the Photokina 2009 fair which will take place in Cologne from October 23rd until 28th. More information on this fair is available from the internet. GERMAN

Matomo