PIR's Manufacturer Roundtable: Looking Back, Forward, Sideways

Viewing the Imaging Market

When I asked the four participants in this edition of the roundtable to take part, I told them we wanted to find out how they did during the Christmas holidays, what they saw as the chief challenges and opportunities for 2011 and, because all of them attended the CES show in January, what caught their eyes once they left their own booths. It was, I said, a look back, a look forward and a glance sideways. Here’s what they had to say.  

Mark Weir

Senior Technical Manager, Digital Imaging Group

Sony Electronics

We look at not only our own results but also data from research providers, and overall things were a little better than expectations in most of the imaging categories. Point and shoots performed a little better than expected; camcorders performed as expected—but there are significant shifts going on there. The real star was interchangeable-lens cameras, which recorded strong growth in both units and dollars. Even during the holiday selling season when ASPs typically erode significantly, we saw something I think surprised everyone: increases in ASP.

You’re referring to both DSLRs and mirrorless cameras? 

Yes, both. Mirrorless is growing, too. We’ve been in that business since June 2010, and the category started to grow significantly then. The NEX-3 and NEX-5 cameras we introduced last summer rapidly rose to be the number-one sellers in the sub-category [of mirrorless]. As a percentage of total [sales] it’s probably 20% of the total interchangeable-lens camera business in Asia; here it’s under 10%, but we expect that will change significantly in 2011. 

You mentioned shifts in the camcorder market. Are those shifts happening because of the ability to make movies with DSLRs?

There are a number of factors, the largest of which is the growth of the MP4 camera, which has led to a new usage style for video that’s quite different from traditional camcorder use. People capture video for visual communication as opposed to archiving a once-in-a-lifetime event. And other [inexpensive] devices that capture HD video and provide easy upload to the Internet are rapidly growing and represent more than half the unit sales in the video camera business. From the DSLR direction, two-thirds of DSLRs sold include HD or Full HD video functions, and that has a significant effect on the camcorder business. And the video capture capability of compact point-and-shoot cameras is growing. [But] the camcorder business is fighting back with more capable models; we introduced our first interchangeable-lens large-sensor camcorder last summer.

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