Digital Camera News: Canon Rebate Program, Canon Leads Sales, Kodak Moving Up, Digital Camera market "running out of steam"

[Ben Stafford]

"Cash In with Canon" Rebate Program

Buy a Canon EOS 20D or Canon EOS-1D Mark II from a Canon USA authorized dealer or reseller between 4/15/2005 and 7/1/2005 and get a rebate of $100 on the EOS 20D and a rebate of $500 on the EOS-1D Mark II.

From the press release: "To claim rebate, purchases must be made April 15 through July 15, 2005. Customers must complete and submit the following to be postmarked by August 8, 2005 and received by August 15, 2005: rebate form, received at time of purchase; a copy of the sales receipt with price paid, dealer name, product model and date clearly legible; a copy of the customer portion of the original Canon U.S.A. warranty card and an original cut-out of the UPC code and body/lens number."

Press Release

Canon Leads Digital Camera Sales Last Year, Kodak Moves Up

According to a report from IDC, Canon had a slim lead in digital camera sales globally last year by being able to capitalized on the demand for higher-end cameras.  Canon sold enough cameras to hit 17.1% of the market, Sony has 16.7%, and Kodak had 11.8%.

Canon's aggressive pricing on digital SLRs helped open up the demand for the more sophisticated cameras, with many sub-$1000 models avaiable.  According to the report, the demand for the digital SLRs was at the cost of demand for "prosumer" models.

The other interesting bit from the IDC report was that Kodak leapfrogged over Olympus to take the #3 spot in total sales worldwide.  In the US, Kodak topped digital camera sales.

For further coverage, head over to CNET.

Digital Still Camera Market is "Running out of Steam"

According to Strategy Analytics, the demand for camera phones will adversely affect the demand for digital still cameras in the future.  Four in 10 mobile phones sold last year included cameras in them for a total of 257 million camera phones, outselling digital cameras four to one.

For more, check The Register.

 

[Brian]

I'm not convinced camera phones will take share away from traditional digital cameras. I don't think anyone buys a camera phone, at least in the US, with the intention of using it as a "real" digital camera. Surely the camera phones from Samsung and others that reach 7MP will make a run, but in my view those are really cameras with phones built in, a little different from the normal camera phone definition,

[Ben Stafford]

I'm with you on that one Brian. I have a megapixel camera in my phone and I only use it as a last resort. One, it's very difficult to get a decent shot (with no flash, etc) so your subject has to be pretty stationary. Then, the battery life on my phone, if I took more than 10 pictures per charge, would be horrible.

It certainly fits in with the push of web-based photo services (like Kodak's EasyShare Gallery, Shutterfly, etc) but there are a lot of other hurdles before camera phones can utilize those services well. Mobile providers have to figure out how to work with the photo services and vice versa.

[Eliwood]

I'm not convinced camera phones will take share away from traditional digital cameras. I don't think anyone buys a camera phone, at least in the US, with the intention of using it as a "real" digital camera. Surely the camera phones from Samsung and others that reach 7MP will make a run, but in my view those are really cameras with phones built in, a little different from the normal camera phone definition,

I totally agree here. The camera phones may be able to cannibalize the very low end budget market, but the phone will never be able to do what a normal camera does without compromising the phone part of the phone as we've seen with the Samsung. A proper camera needs a viewfinder or LCD, a decent zoom lens, and a flash. How do you fit that on a phone without designing the phone around a camera body? No amount of miniaturization is going to get around that.