Originally posted by Mistral75 [In France] At the time of film photography - which was extremely stable - there were 2.5 million units sold per year. There were 300,000 cameras with interchangeable lenses and 2.2 million compact or bridge cameras. Today, if we take the French market for cameras with interchangeable lenses, we obtain more or less the same figures if we add those of DSLRs and mirrorless cameras.
Assuming volumes of sales go down to film era level, it would be much more difficult to make money out of it with digital. Simply because the amount of NRE cost of R&D for a new digital camera model of today is far greater than the NRE cost for a new film camera, the unit cost is also higher for a digital camera vs unit cost of a film camera of the same format. Today, customers expect a lot of electronic and software feature (e.g 4K video, AF tracking, fast burst rate etc), the kind of complexity that didn't exist for film. If the digital camera market goes back to film era kind of sales volumes, only two or three camera brands can survive. Camera companies are going to be squeezed between falling volomes and increasing specs of digital cameras, like a sissors' effect, simply become the new digital camera model must be even better than the previous model or else no one will buy it. So only companies having the critical size will be able to keep making cameras and lenses. Obviously, Canon liklyhood of survival is one of the highest, given that they downsize quick enough, same for Sony and Nikon. All the other cameras brands will die.
Last edited by biz-engineer; 11-23-2019 at 09:38 AM.