14 DAY TRIAL // How could you not love all the benefits of a digital camera? The ease of use, take all the pictures you like without having to spend so much of your precious time to have films developed only to find you were completely out of focus or that the film was exposed to light and it is now ruined?
There are basically the rhetorical questions users have been asking themselves in the past few year and it all lead to them switching to digital photography as the logical and practical thing to do.
So sales soared and manufacturers raced to come up with better and cheaper models, while also pushing their Research & Development departments to find solutions to problems like higher sensor resolution, better zooming systems and more memory to store pictures and short movies. Everything sounds great, so where's the problem?
Photo Marketing Association International (PMAI) is worried that the whole switching process (from analog to digital cameras) will slow down this year, but that could be a result of no one using old cameras anyway.
The PMA2005, which took place this weekend in Orlando is where the Photo Marketing Association International expressed these worries concerning the slow-down of digital camera sales, which is estimated to only a 13% rise this year.
The PMAI says 52% of American households will own at least a digital camera by the end of the year. Many consumers are already on their second digital camera purchase, suggesting the market is maturing earlier than expected.
As a result, manufacturers are adding features and dropping prices. Kodak's new cameras offer extras such as expanded zoom capability and larger liquid-crystal display (LCD) preview screens. Fuji has played with the innards of its cameras to increase battery life to 500 pictures from 350.
Kodak, Sony and Canon dominate the top end of the industry, with a combined 57.4% market share: Kodak at 21.9% to Sony's 19.4% and Canon's 16.1%.