A reeling camera market gets a new foe: iPhone 7 Plus
LOS ANGELES — Apple has touted the camera on its new iPhone 7 Plus as having the quality of a high-end, digital DSLR, the kind of camera favored by professional and amateur photographers for glossy portraits, weddings and editorial work.
Not so fast. There's still a big gap between DSLRs and phones. But with smartphones inching even closer to higher-quality photos as produced by cameras, what does the optics of the iPhone 7 Plus say about the future of cameras?
The camera market is already reeling from a six-year dive in demand for consumer point-and-shoots as smartphone cameras rapidly improved.
Yet while the gap is narrowing, there's still a big valley. And for retailers looking to hook in customers for the holiday season, the excitement in cameras has turned to non-traditional, different ways of capturing images.
Traditional camera manufacturers, “should be worried,” says Andy Yang, CEO of photo sharing site 500px. “The software keeps getting better on smartphones. Within 10 years, there will probably be a convergence," between what DSLRs can do and what's possible on smartphones.
No surprise to anyone with a smartphone in one's pocket: people share photos far differently than they did a decade ago, and that's changed the hardware they need.
Rather than downloading photos from a camera card and then posting to a shared website — or even more archaic, printing a roll of film — billions of consumers simply point, tap and share via text or app.
Some 95 million smartphone photos are uploaded daily to popular photo sharing site Instagram, and 10 billion videos and images are viewed daily on Snapchat. Newer cameras have wifi and can connect to a smartphone app on the phone, but it’s still a clunky process that requires typing in a password on a camera LCD screen that’s not as easy to navigate and then sending it to your phone for sharing.
With sales of 1.4 billion smartphones in 2015 alone, better-than-ever snapshots, selfies, photos of great meals and the like are being produced on iPhones, the Samsung Galaxy line and models from HTC, LG, Motorola and others.
Sales for compact point and shoot cameras have collapsed to an estimated 13 million in 2016 from a peak of 121.5 million in 2010, according to the Camera and Imaging Products Association.
There are a few pockets of strength, but these are vulnerable.
Serious amateurs and professionals still want the specialty lenses (wide angle, medium, telephoto, etc) that are the main selling of a DSLR camera. “Photographers will always want cameras with interchangeable lenses," said Yang.
On 500px, a photo sharing site to show off your best work, some 70% of the photos come from DSLRs, says Yang.
Apple's claim that the new iPhone 7 Plus shoots with a "telephoto" zoom is a bit of a stretch, (the second lens is a 56mm portrait lens) though its dual lens system does answer one popular consumer request: the ability to optically zoom in on a subject, like you can do with cameras.
“There’s a big perception that this is a step above a point and shoot,” says Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies.
Still, the quality is degraded when an iPhone 7 Plus user opts for the digital zoom, which chooses the second lens and lets users (via software) crop in on an image to produce a 10x zoom-like effect.
For up close, higher-quality imaging, serious photographers will still opt for the physical, optical zoom lenses, more megapixels for bigger blow-ups and the ability to use different interchangable lenses on cameras. For this they'll need to stick with DSLRs, which start at around $500 for entry-level models like Canon's Rebel line (vs, $769 for the iPhone 7 Plus), and up to $3,000 and up for such models as Sony's A7SII and the new Canon 5D Mark IV.
The specialty camera market has another booster: big box retailers, which look to cameras to bring in customers. With Black Friday and the holiday sales season approaching, they will turn to DSLRs and “different” sort of cameras, says Scott Peterson, an analyst with market research firm Gap Intelligence
These include ones that shoot in 360 degree virtual reality, GoPros, drones and land-based cameras that use drone camera technology, like the DJI Osmo.
“What’s working is the weird,” he says."Black Friday ads are all about getting you to buy by showing images of products--these are the ones that will work this year."
Sales of DSLRs and smaller mirrorless compact pro-level cameras, have remained steady, and IDC analyst Chris Chute doesn’t see that changing.
“With the growth in smartphonography, the average consumer who bought the $700 DSLR has gone away,” he says. “What’s left are enthusiasts, pros and semi pros and they’re still buying the cameras for $2,000 and up.”He estimates yearly sales of around 3 million DSLRs
Cameras as we once knew them — black boxes with a big lens — aren't yet ready to join CD players and turntables in the bin of abandoned technology. But the camera that’s always by our side is now the smartphone. And that looks unlikely to change.
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