Originally posted by BruceBanner This is quite interesting however, it's made me think. Smartphones have no doubt caused a massive dent in the dslr market. How many of you have known of people who bought or received a dslr for xmas, only to realise its difficult and confusing af, use it a handful of times and give up and go back to their top tier flagship smartphone (that does it all for them), which they pay monthly for on a contract? I know at least 2-3 friends that fall into that category.
But we will always have a need and demand for proper photography. The Olympics and sporting events will not be covered by smartphones, ever. If someone is serious about their wedding and wants large prints, it's not ever happening from smartphones. Commercial photography, etc etc.
So then what? How do the dslr markets survive?
I think we're gonna see prices go up, across all brands, maybe it's even started with Pentax, they feel more expensive than they were in 2016. If you want professional photography... pay for it, pure and simple. Hobbyists and enthusiasts will suffer the most, they better have well paid jobs.
How else can it go? Are we seeing the death of affordable decent photography gear and ushering a new era of pricey stuff?
Thoughts?
Let's give credit to the Ricoh executives. They saw all this coming, closed down plants and got the tax breaks from the writeoffs, killed advertising, pandering to bricks and mortar retail stores, and went to a trickle of quality, expensive releases. Nikon and Olympus both sell more cameras than little Pentax, but they can't make a profit.
You know what? It's almost as if those executives with all their data know better than us amateurs sitting on our keyboards or making YouTube videos, pretending we understand the camera business.
The last thing a big company should do in a crash is to pay for steering your company towards a completely new mount and lenses and expect growth to cover it. The Canon CEO said mirrorless proved to be a failure in that regard, for them, each MILC simply stole a sale from a DSLR, it did not grow the market or even arrest its slide.
With an activist investor, look out Sony. They know the profits are not there anymore, it's a crowded market, cameras have just been put into a separate structure that can be sold off.
Last edited by clackers; 06-25-2020 at 12:58 AM.