1001noisycameras.com just published an article showcasing when this year’s 187 digital cameras (and counting) were released. No big surprise – the majority were point&shoots and thus were released around PMA 2009 (in February) and for back-to-school/Holiday 2009 (in July and August). DSLRs were released pretty evenly throughout the year.
What I find interesting is that so many point&shoots are still being thrown on the market. More and more smartphones (as well as dumbphones) have cameras, so they are making inroads into the bottom part of the p&s market. For the rest of the p&s market, since these cameras are pretty much vanilla and indistinguishable from the next, it seems manufacturers just keep refreshing them with little tweaks, so they have new marketing fodder. In short, a typical sign of a commoditized market.
Photoscala released an analysis on the world-wide DSLR market share gains and losses between the years 2006 and 2008.
Analyzing many sources, Photoscala's DSLR market share analysis shows Sony and Nikon as winners, Canon as the main loser.
I think there are three lessons to be learned from this analysis:
1. Brand matters
People shun smaller brands when they are under attack. A big part of Sony’s market share gain is attributable to their take-over of Minolta, thus giving DSLR buyers the confidence that their investment would be protected. As a result, people started to buy Sony again. But there might be another reason why Sony gained share:
2. In-Body Image Stabilization (IS)
Minolta was the first to release in-body IS – all the smaller guys followed. As pointed out in my analysis on the Panasonic GF1, it’s the trend of the future for entry-level DSLR, since it allows consumers, esp. the ones who trade up to their first DSLR and are used to in-body IS in compacts, to buy a wide range of non-IS lenses from multiple manufacturers. Both Canon and Nikon probably lost share to Sony in the entry level market over their lack of in-body IS. Expect at least one of the big guys to adopt in-body IS.
3. Great cameras in the mid- to pro-range
Nikon’s D3, D700 and D300 really improved low-light performance and became very well known for it, which explains why Nikon ended up in the plus and Canon lost even more market share. Canon had no such break-through in that sub-segment of the market at that time.
Who should be scared over these numbers? Mainly Canon, but also Panasonic. For someone who wants to break into the top 4 of the DSLR market, Panasonic needs to improve their market share very quickly. So far, they have not.
We all know that Apple designs its products for usability and user experience, not necessarily for the most cutting-edge features. That is certainly true for photo and video on the iPhone.
For photo, the desired user experience is to be able to snap a quick picture, maybe do some minor tweaks, then upload the photo and move on with your life. Actually, our own poll confirms this, with almost two thirds of our users doing their edits on the iPhone before posting their images.
For video, the desired user experience is probably more limited by the carrier and the processing capabilities of the iPhone. While the current experience is shoot – trim – upload, I’m sure transitions will be added over time as long as the experience remains speedy and easy to use. That is also the reason, why we do not get 720p video on the iPhone – apart from carriers not liking much bigger uploads, the rendering time for 720p might just not be speedy enough to pass the user experience bar that Apple sets.
Server-side video processing: Animate, create, add effects, render, scale
If you could capture 720p video on your iPhone (maybe 1080p in an iPhone 5G at a later time), Apple could still only allow to process and upload the low-res version on your iPhone. But you could also specify transitions and add effects on your iPhone, with all of this info being written into a separate “directions” file (probably an XML file). Once connected to Wi-Fi, you could then upload the hi-res movie plus “directions” to a server (Apple could offer this as a service and so could 3rd parties such as Muvee, which already has a lot of the required technology). There, your “directions” are processed, the video is edited automatically and then rendered. You could even scale it down (give me a 720p in addition to the 1080p that was captured initially). Maybe even up-res it from 720p to 1080p. Once done, I then download the movie or movies to my Mac or PC or to my living-room computer to be played on a flat screen TV.
Would this be a viable service? I think so. Would I pay for it? Yes, I would. So this could be a viable business opportunity for Apple or third parties when it comes to server-side video processing. And it would not have to be limited to just iPhone video – it could include video from all kinds of sources (phones, camcorders, digicams, DSLRs).
Server-side photo processing: Stitch, HDR, add effects, scale and animate
A similar opportunity exists in the photo space. Many cameras today allow you to shoot RAW and JPG at the same time, so the technology exists. Similar to video processing, you could allow RAW uploads only when connected to Wi-Fi, together with my “directions” which are stored in an XML file. A company like onOne could offer a service, where they could stitch panoramas, combine images into HDR and use their Genuine Fractals product (see our review) to automatically up-scale my images. They could create animated slideshows. They could even create movies of photographs similar to what you can do in iMovie. Again, all this could be done on the server side without me interacting with the process – just using a “directions” file to tell the server what to do. The photos could come from all kinds of cameras. And I would be willing to pay for it.
A lot of the server-side processing technology exists today. Research has shown that 4 out of 10 people in their 40’s and 50’s (who have money, but no time, which means they are a very valuable target audience) do not like the existing social media sharing options and are willing to pay between $72 and $90 per year for a better experience. So the opportunity exists and is real. When will we see the first server-side processing of video and photos from the iPhone and other cameras? I hope soon!
65,000. Ask any iPhone devotee and they will tell you that that is the number of apps available in the AppStore.
Next question: How many peripherals have been approved? Uh-oh – long silence…
In a very interesting blog post, Us Two, a mobile content studio with 43 developers, outlined that their first iPhone game, Steppin, cost around $50,000 to develop and netted them a profit of only $1,600. Subsequently, they developed a much smaller app, MouthOff, which sold almost 30,000 copies. With development cost of 11,000 pounds Sterling, they broke even.
You cannot do hardware development with that kind of money. If you develop an iPhone peripheral, cost will run into the 6 figures; depending on the complexity of the hardware, it might even be mid-six figures.
Here’s the rub: Why would you chance that kind of money, if you are not sure Apple will approve the peripheral? Risking 20 grand is one thing – risking 6 figures is a total different business proposition.
Which is why it is good that the FCC is looking into Apple’s rejection of Google Voice and why I’m sure the European Union will start investigating Apple in the near future as well: Apple’s AppStore is a monopoly – it’s the only way an app or a peripheral can be brought to market legally. And unless Apple makes its approval process more predictable, developers will remain unhappy, peripherals will only show up in a trickle and the Feds will investigate Apple.
Having worked on the Intel Inside Co-Marketing program in the past, I know a thing or two about situations like this: To be (perceived as) clean and having created a level-playing field, you have to publish your rules! You have the freedom to set your own rules (within the law, of course), but once they are published, you’ve got to execute against them as impartially as you can. Unless Apple will publish their rules and stop approving or disapproving an app on a (perceived) whim, their quarrels with developers and regulators will not go away.
Once we will see a flood (not a trickle) of peripherals show up in the AppStore, we know that Apple has fixed its AppStore approval process. It’s as simple as that!
