Will Compact System Cameras Push the Point And Shoot Ones Out Of Market?

According to a report from Wall Street journal, Samsung has decided to gradually stop producing point&shoot cameras and instead focus its attention in the production of compact system cameras.

This would certainly mean a major change for Samsung, since, as reported by IDC, Samsung was the fourth major producer of cameras with a 11% market share. This market share was equal to about 11 million units. Most of this share composed of point&shoot while only 120,000 compact system cameras were sold by the company. So Samsung’s decision to shun the further production of point&shoot cameras would certainly mean that Samsung sees a lot of potential in the market for compact system cameras. Back in 2010, Samsung had announced that the company would strive to become the best-selling manufacturer of compact system cameras by 2012 and overall best selling brand by 2015. Now in 2012, the company stands at position 5 when it comes to compact system cameras while the overall position is 4^th. In the class of point&shoot cameras, Samsung happens to be at the 5^th place.

There have been a lot of changes going on in the market of point&shoot cameras for a while. Kodak, which held a market share of about 7.4% in 2010 is now almost out of the market due to tough competition from other tech giants that lead it to bankruptcy. Besides,Olympus and Pentax are also considering reducing the production of point&shoot cameras. If these three manufacturers are out of the market, that would certainly leave the market with a huge gap which would be filled by other manufacturers, most probably by Canon, Sony and Nikon. However, it clearly seems that the real issue happens to be profit instead of market share.

Basically market share and profit do not go along very well in the market of point&shoot cameras. This has been particularly true for the last few years during which three of the top ten camera makers claimed losses in point&shoot camera lines while another two underwent a loss in market share. This pretty much explains why manufacturers are focusing their attention elsewhere instead of continuing investment in point&shoot cameras. But for the time being, Samsung would pay specific attention to the Korean, Chinese, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese market while strategy for the US  market would follow later.

Analysts have talked about the much needed shift in the design of point&shoot cameras in past and it seems that we are finally witnessing that stage. But this certainly does not imply that the production of point&shoot cameras would be completely terminated and we won’t have any of those cameras any more.

The production will continue, however their importance would considerably decrease due to the onslaught of smart phones and DSLR cameras and compact system cameras. Besides, there is also a group who thinks that the production of compact system cameras should completely take over the production of high end point&shoot cameras.