[Rondec]

I think that @Aristophanes' point is that the desktop computer age is all but over (whether that's at the $3k pricepoint or $1k pricepoint) and that any workflow still tied to it will not see widespread mass market adoption.

I tend to agree.

That may be generally true, but I do think that for folks who are into photography or video, there will still be a tendency to migrate to desktop or laptop solutions over tablets and phones. There is still a need to back up images, as well. Yes, you can do that in the cloud, but a large portion of the United States doesn't have adequate cell phone upload speeds to allow one to back up a significant number of RAW images. The only option really is a dedicated hard drive of some sort.

I don't have a crystal ball, but I think the death of the PC has been overstated. People just aren't upgrading them as often (the same as their cameras).

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Last edited by Rondec; 10-02-2017 at 05:57 AM.

[Nicolas06]

That's true, in a majority of cases a 1k computer (on the lowerish-end, even custom built comps around that price point) will do fine for photo editing. At a certain point, spending more money for higher end hardware will be a bit of overkill unless you're going to be doing video editing on top of that.

Actually all included and quite powerfull you could get it for $600 with screen and OS. Without them or going for Linux you could be down to $400. And that would include only quality parts. Sure it would not be a gamer PC, but it would do everything else just fine.

Actually if you have a somewhat modern TV you can buy a wireless keyboard with touchpad so that become easy to display your photos on it.

I think that @Aristophanes' point is that the desktop computer age is all but over (whether that's at the $3k pricepoint or $1k pricepoint) and that any workflow still tied to it will not see widespread mass market adoption.

I tend to agree.

For now in US as an example, 85% of houses have a computer while only 75% have a smartphone and about 50% a tablet. The most ubiguituous device is the computer.

And there a reason for that, it is for the same price the most powerfull and efficiant by far. There a lack of advanced software on smartphones and tablets, but mostly there the thing around the ergonomics that can't really be helped.

The sales of computer dropped but are not anymore but basically it is because now a 5 year old computer is still good enough and you may not even see the difference is you are not into gaming. In the nineties a 5 year old computer was ancient.

But the problem isn't the device. The problem is that most people do not want to do it all. That's the difference between an amateur, the general public and a pro or an enthousiast.

Most people that buy a musical instrument do not spend years at the music academy. Anyone listening to their play can hear their obvious deficiancy, but that's not really the point. Some will go to study painting for years, that will really learn and train. And some that just do it without caring much. Some will learn to do basic stuff to improve their home, some will make it their job.

There isn't any threat for now that the pros will stop post processing or that graphists would not use photoshop anymore. If anything the use we make of photo and video is more and more advanced and need advanced processing more and more.

But most people do not care and they never cared. Raw isn't for the general public taking photos. Post processing neither. And to be honest I don't think of a reason they should have to care if not interrested. There so many things in life that there no point in doing things you are not interrested in at all if it can be helped.

[eurostar]

...only 75% have a smartphone...

Really?

[mee]

Really?

Really!

And desktops have a ton more processing power than any smartphone today and we have large screens (22" inches) to view images. There is no way I'm transitioning to a 4-6" smartphone screen and weaker processor to post process images.

Who wants to perform surgery with chopsticks? That's what I'd feel like doing this work on a smartphone.

The smartphone is better for instant-ness. I tend to go home and process my images over hours to days.

[Zivelot]

I seriously envy anyone who can make any sense out of these documents. I am just not that minded and knowledgeable about these things LOL.

[Winder]

I think that @Aristophanes' point is that the desktop computer age is all but over (whether that's at the $3k pricepoint or $1k pricepoint) and that any workflow still tied to it will not see widespread mass market adoption.

I tend to agree.

There is an ebb and flow to this. I don't think we will see the desktop return to total dominance like we saw 10 years ago. We didn't have the technology to create affordable specialized devices like we do today. The market has become fragmented because we now have more options and more specialized computers. Laptops, tablets, smartphone, desktops..... I have gone through phases where I was using my laptop more for editing than my older desktop, but now with a 38" LG 4k display I pretty much work on my desktop 90% of the time. Technology keeps changing and shifting the market. I know a couple of photographers who experimented with a mobile workflow and have since gone back to desktops. The desktop will never go back to what it was, but I would not be surprised to see a computer become a fixed part of the house like a water heater or other fixed appliance with multiple devices connected to it. We are already seeing this in high end houses where they have a media closet built in to the house. The computer age is far from over. We are just discovering new ways to connect to it and new form factors for it.

[Igor123]

I think that @Aristophanes' point is that the desktop computer age is all but over (whether that's at the $3k pricepoint or $1k pricepoint) and that any workflow still tied to it will not see widespread mass market adoption.

I tend to agree.

I'm not so sure, while for a large part of the market I could see it happen, it won't go away completely anytime soon, at least not the input/controller style.

The difference in productivity is huge, and then I don't mean processing power, mobile is catching up there, but more about user input: Whether it's inputing text, precision clicks for masks etc in images, or other professional type of work where you need to have a time efficient way (and ergonomic, practical etc) to input text/commands/clicks all day long desktop is still a lot more efficient (with side benefits like that it can fit more GUI elements for mouse/keyboard than large ones that fit touch, can have smaller text etc, further reducing the number of clicks by needing fewer menus, tabs etc since more fit on the ones you see).

Look at the gaming industry...mobile grows like crazy but anything that has a timecritical element there is an auto-win for PC due to the controllers - mouse and keyboard, and the same goes for the professional part of the gaming industry (mostly, there are a couple of exceptions), most of the money (as in viewer/sponsor/prize money where performance matters, not counting sales which is related more to entertainment/consumer) is in the PC part.

So in all, although mobile might gobble up the media-consumtion/seldom-user parts, the pro/performance parts will remain desktoplike I think.

Then one could argue that soon we'll just plug or cellphone or smartwatch into a dock at home to hook it up to which ever screen, VR/AR headset or else we have, but then we just make add a "desktop" control to the mobile device, and I'd call that desktop still. So ok, catering to that part of the market may not be the mass-consumer way, but there will still be a market there too.

[Mistral75]

More food for thought in four weeks:

FY2018/03 Q2 Results will be released on October 30, 2017, and uploaded on this site at 15:30(JST).

Source: Investor Relations | Global | Ricoh

[Rondec]

Really?

There are a lot of older people who don't care for new technology, but the other thing to remember is that the United States is very large with great swaths of countryside that are not reached by cell phone towers. If you live in rural Montana or Idaho, spending money on a smart phone and a data plan may not make much sense if you can never really use the data anyway.

[johnmflores]

I don't see the PC dying completely, just it's pre-eminence in consumers' digital life. PCs will continue to be useful as tools to creative professionals and serious amateur photographers for the foreseeable future. But for everyone else they are less and less important.

I analyze website traffic for a number of clients and for nearly all of them 50% of their website traffic is coming from phones. PCs are second at around 45% and tablets a distant third at 5% or so. And the trend is for phone traffic to rise even more.

With this in mind, cameras that seamlessly interface with phones - not PCs - may be especially attractive to those looking to step up from their smartphone to a "real camera" and building out wifi and bluetooth connectivity on these cameras is critical. The new Ricoh Theta V, for example, has both. The implementation is still a bit wonky but at least they are there and working on it.

The big question is whether or not the PC + ILC market has stabilized yet or will shrink further and whether or not the industry is right-sized for the market.

I don't think the shakeout is over yet.

[thibs]

Is internet traffic representative of the use we make of device in completely different activities?
I hear you and have no reason to doubt what you wrote but I'm not sure about the connection to the PC market (which is pretty mature).
Smartphone are changed every year or two by most people. PC no way. Less money to be made and no real novelties. Sure.
But does that mean people use more mobile device as for photography/videography treatment?

[johnmflores]

Is internet traffic representative of the use we make of device in completely different activities?
I hear you and have no reason to doubt what you wrote but I'm not sure about the connection to the PC market (which is pretty mature).
Smartphone are changed every year or two by most people. PC no way. Less money to be made and no real novelties. Sure.
But does that mean people use more mobile device as for photography/videography treatment?

Two of the top 5 camera brands on Flickr (and 4 of the top 10) are phone makers. Apple is #1. Samsung #3. I'd be very surprised if the workflow includes a traditional computer.

And Flickr is a camera-enthusiast website. I'd imagine that more mainstream sites like Instagram skew even more mobile. Instagram in fact does not enable uploading via a traditional computer. It's mobile upload only, so for people like me who like to upload photos taken with ILCs I have to add even more steps to my workflow to make that happen.

[Kunzite]

@thibs:
That's it. Workstations being "fully" replaced by tablets and smartphones ignores the most essential factor: usage. Another mistake is in thinking that it's somehow a competition, that one tool MUST replace another.
Smartphones are versatile, suitable for many tasks. But, if you want to do some serious work, they can't hold a candle to the "classic" PC. They don't have the storage capacity and speed; they don't have the processing power; they don't have the RAM for that. Then, there's the user interface, which doesn't give you any degree of precision.

[Rondec]

Two of the top 5 camera brands on Flickr (and 4 of the top 10) are phone makers. Apple is #1. Samsung #3. I'd be very surprised if the workflow includes a traditional computer.

And Flickr is a camera-enthusiast website. I'd imagine that more mainstream sites like Instagram skew even more mobile. Instagram in fact does not enable uploading via a traditional computer. It's mobile upload only, so for people like me who like to upload photos taken with ILCs I have to add even more steps to my workflow to make that happen.

It isn't surprising that cell phones are the number one camera devices in use right now. I still am not sure what that says about the ILC market.

Certainly you have a couple of options currently -- shoot jpegs SOOC and use wifi to upload them to your cell phone and from there to the web. Or, you can shoot RAW and put them on some type of editing device (tablet, desktop, laptop) and edit them and up load them from there. Probably the more you spent on your ILC and lenses, the more likely you will be to want to maximize them by shooting RAW and post processing.

What I can't see is most folks editing a lot of RAW images on their phone. It is pretty clunky to do so on such a tiny screen and I can't say the results are going to beat out of camera jpegs.

[johnmflores]

@thibs:
That's it. Workstations being "fully" replaced by tablets and smartphones ignores the most essential factor: usage. Another mistake is in thinking that it's somehow a competition, that one tool MUST replace another.

Is anyone here arguing that workstations are going to be "fully" replaced by tablets and smartphones? I certainly am not.

It isn't surprising that cell phones are the number one camera devices in use right now. I still am not sure what that says about the ILC market.

It boils down to this:

1. Is the ILC/serious camera market stabilized or will phones continue to erode the market size of ILCs?
2. Can Ricoh successfully compete within this shrunken market?
3. What is the growth potential of getting phone photographers to step up to ILCs?

My recent posts discuss the third point and what features might be important there. I am positing that any ILC targeting that market should focus on phone integration because computer desktop tools are not critical to that group.