Thirty-year-old nurse Rie Wakaume is a camera maker's dream. About to get married in Italy, Wakaume is ready to splurge on the latest trend in photography - digital SLR cameras - even though she has a perfectly good camera.
She highlights not only the readiness of shutterbugs to snap up professional-level technology now that prices have come down, but also a potentially lucrative change in the camera business: shorter replacement cycles.
"Digital SLRs are now cheaper, smaller and take better pictures," Wakaume said after visiting her local electronics store.
Digital SLRs - single-lens reflex cameras that enable consumers to see images exactly as they will be captured - are all the rage. And Wakaume says prices are about half of what she remembered two years ago.
Thanks to the revived demand, global shipments may jump 24 percent to 100.5 million units in 2006, Mizuho's Katsura estimated. But he expects growth in 2007 to slow to 11 percent, followed by a 13 percent rise in 2008.
EMERGING DEMAND:
Shipments in the recent months have exceeded market expectations, and also prompted Canon, Olympus and Pentax Corp to raise shipment goals.
One reason is rising demand in emerging markets.
"The industry is becoming mature, and that's why we have to expand our sales efforts in China and Russia, where we're seeing growth," Tomonori Iwashita, the head of Canon's camera unit, said in an interview with Reuters this month.
By 2009, some 22 percent of global digital camera shipments will be to the region it calls the rest of the world (ROW), which includes Brazil, Russia and India, according to IDC. The Asia-Pacific region, including China, will make up 26 percent.
FEEL LIKE A PRO:
Prices for digital SLRs are expected to dip as low as $500 by the end of the year, as Canon and Nikon compete against new players such as Sony.
"We have to make new products that can attract young people who are used to taking photos with cell phones," Nikon President Michio Kariya told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.
Entry-level SLRs, which make beginners feel like pros, are also becoming lighter with models like the one from Olympus, weighing as much as a canned soft drink.