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Olympus dropping <$200 compact cameras

May 16, 2013 by
olympus pen e-p5

When was the last time you bought a no-frills camera? Exactly…

Seeing as how most people now carry a phone with a pretty good camera built in, compact cameras have to significantly up the ante to attract an upgrade purchase — and they can’t do that too well at the low end of the market. What does a $100 camera do that your phone doesn’t — except hurt your wallet less when you lose or break it?

So the general online response to the Wall Street Journal’s report that Olympus will halt production of <$200 models was a resounding lack of surprise.

The elimination of the V series of compacts comes after the company’s camera business posted a loss in the last fiscal year through March, “because demand for compact cameras turned out to be weaker than expected, the company said.” What were they expecting? Well, they did sell 5.1 million cameras last fiscal year, but in light of recent weak sales now look to move only 2.7 million this year.

Olympus says it will concentrate on its well-received mirrorfree interchangeable lens models.

olympus pen e-p5

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Product News, Trends

On the DIMAcast: What Sony learned about imaging consumers and more at The Big Photo Show

May 13, 2013 by
New DIMAcast 2.0 logo

New DIMAcast 2.0 logoIn this week’s DIMAcast, Mike Kahn of Sony talks about his company’s experience at The Big Photo Show. Listen and discover who the most passionate photography consumers are and what they are most interested in; how Kahn knew The Big Photo Show would be a hit when others doubted; and how he suggests photo business can capitalize on the enthusiasm for imaging among consumers today.

Download the interview here or at www.dimacast.com, or listen without downloading, using the player below. (Interview begins at 06:08.)

Filed Under: Big Photo Show, CliQ, Consumer Interest, DIMA, Featured, Learning Opportunities, Marketing, PMA News, Retail, Trends Tagged With: , ,

Counting up Consumer desire for Connected cameras

May 9, 2013 by
infotrends

 

infotrendsIn 2012, less than 15 percent of all camera models introduced featured connectivity. In 2013, that will likely be closer to 30 percent. Good news, right? Well, research firm InfoTrends notes, 100 percent of camera phones are connected — and connectivity is what most customers want.

In its survey of the digital camera end-user market, InfoTrends presented varying product concepts — and WiFi-enabled cameras specifically received the highest interest ratings; overall  connected and smart cameras show high levels of interest.

“Camera vendors need to make sure the sharing feature is simple and easy to use to guarantee consumer adoption of this feature/function,” the firm says. The phone “has become the everyday camera for most consumers and continues to steal more and more photo taking activity away from traditional cameras. The image quality produced by camera phones is constantly improving; traditional camera vendors cannot rely on image quality alone to compete with camera phones.”

InfoTrends says its study considers the ways in which user demographics are changing, highlights the segments that should be targeted in future marketing efforts, and spotlights what consumers are doing with their digital photos.

The $5,000 2012 Digital Camera End-user Survey features 63 pages of analysis with 49 tables and figures. InfoTrends says it’s been conducting end-user surveys to track the adoption and usage of digital cameras for more than a decade. “Behaviors are not always predictable, so a useful part of this research is tracking how the market changes from year-to-year as a result of new products, prices, and increased consumer awareness.”

 

Filed Under: Trends Tagged With: ,

Industry First: More smartphones shipped in Q1 2013 than feature phones

April 28, 2013 by
apple iPhone 5

 

apple iPhone 5We already know that most pictures are taken with camera phones these days, and that the best cameras — and more importantly, the best post-capture photography functions such as enhancing and sharing — are in smartphones as exemplified by the iPhone. The pace of smartphone adoption shows no sign of slowing market analysis firm IDC reports smartphones outshipped “feature phones” — phones with cameras, music players, etc., but not an expandable operating system — for the first time.

“Phone users want computers in their pockets,” IDC says. “The days where phones are used primarily to make phone calls and send text messages are quickly fading away”

And it’s not a larger share of a shrinking  market: The overall worldwide mobile phone market grew 4 percent year over year in the seasonally slow first quarter of 2013. IDC adds.

Vendors shipped 418.6 million phones in 1Q13 compared to 402.4 million units in the first quarter of 2012 and 483.2 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012. This year, 216.2 million of those were smartphones,51.6 percent of the total.

Samsung lead the sales, shipping “more units than the next four vendors combined,” IDC reports. Apple’s smartphone shipment volume hit a new first-quarter, growing 6.6 percent year over year. LG, Huawei, and ZTE round out the top 5 — a group which no long includes Nokia, BlackBerry, or HTC.

 

Also of note: Apple debuted it’s most photography-focused TV ad yet, one which claims, “Every day more photos are taken with the iPhone than any other camera.”

 

Filed Under: Product News, Trends Tagged With:

The May/June issue of PMA magazine is now live

April 26, 2013 by
pmamag_mayjune2013_250x331

pmamag_mayjune2013_250x331The May/June issue of PMA Magazine – Connecting the Imaging Communities is live and online. There is so much great information inside, like a look at some of the exciting events at The Big Photo Show; a profile on Nations Photo Lab and Artsy Couture, and how founder Ryan Millman has made them hugely successful; and a look at how both Jessops and Ritz are rising from the ashes and getting back on track.

Also in this issue:

  • The dispersed photo challenge
  • How one pro photographer’s own marketing solution turned into a new business: Sticky Albums
  • Getting picture: Prints of special images are becoming cool
  • Social marketing: What you can learn from other companies’ disasters
  • How credible are you? Your body language speaks volumes
  • Free tools to help you promote and celebrate National Photo Month
Filed Under: Big Photo Show, Business, Consumer Interest, Featured, PMA News, Retail, Social Imaging, Trends Tagged With: , , , ,

Changes in Photography Initiative launched at Carnegie Museum

April 18, 2013 by
carnegie

 

carnegie

There have been plenty of changes in photography and imaging in recent years, and we see no sign of that rapid rate of progress letting up any time soon. Now a new initiative at the Carnegie Museum of Art “aims to be a living laboratory” for exploring these tumultuous times.

The Hillman Photography Initiative “positions the museum to be a leader in a subject area with broad appeal and profound relevance to contemporary society,” the museum says. “The Initiative’s focus on art and technological innovation makes it a great fit not only for Carnegie Museums but for the entire region. We expect it to become a national model.”

What will it explore? “For much of its history, photography has pervaded our world, but never more so than today, when non-stop technological innovations make it ever easier to take photographs and share them instantaneously,” the museum adds. “There are over eight billion pictures on the social media site Flickr; photographs on the Internet appear for seconds and then disappear, lost in a pictorial “newsfeed.” How does that affect their meaning? Our belief in their veracity? Our way of valuing them as keepsakes? And where in the midst of all these images and new technologies does art reside? What are the intellectual and aesthetic criteria by which we value photographs made with new means (for example, cell phones, computational photography) today? And how will we value those made by other means tomorrow?”

More information is here.

 

Filed Under: Trends

UPDATED: CPI closes Sears, Walmart portrait studios; Canadian operations continue until sold

April 8, 2013 by
cpi logo

cpi logo picture me logo St. Louis-based CPI is closing shop — and with it, the portrait studios it operated in Sears and Walmart retail outlets across the United States.  In a letter written to CPI employees,  President and CEO Jim Abel said “Over the course of the past year, we have discussed in a variety of communications that we have been battling through the decline of our business. During that time we negotiated deals with our hosts, secured additional funding from our banks, and marketed our company to potential purchasers. Unfortunately, all of those efforts have fallen short – the decline of our business proved too great an obstacle to overcome and we will be forced to discontinue our U.S. operations effective … April 3. The Canadian business, which has not suffered from the same difficulty as the U.S., has continued to deliver strong financial performance. The Canadian operations will continue as a standalone company until it is sold to another party.”

sears portrait Studio logoAs Popular Photography put it: “The department store portrait studio has long been a part of our American cultural lexicon. For some families, it’s a tradition, giving them an opportunity to get dressed up and put on fake smiles for cheesy, boring pictures. At one time, some of them were staffed with photographers, but they have long since become a punchline. Now, it has moved two big steps closer to extinction, as Sears and Walmart have shut down their in-store studio programs.”

The message on Sears’ site reads:

“After many years of providing family portrait photography, we are sad to announce our Sears Portrait Studios are now closed. We appreciate your patronage and allowing us to capture your precious memories. If you currently have an album or have had a recent portrait session, you can order products at searsphotos.com thru April 18, 2013. If you have had a recent session, your portraits may be available at your local studio.”

Walmart’s PictureMe Portrait studio site is down.

The St Louis Dispatch reports CPI defaulted on its lenders.

More information is here and here.

And as The Imaging Resource concludes in its news item:

“If you do still enjoy perfectly posed family photographs, taken with an extremely soft lens, there are many small, local portrait studios who would be more than happy for your business. And that way you can support local artists, too.”

 

Filed Under: Business, Industry Notes, Retail, Trends

iStockphoto investigates mobile imaging

March 26, 2013 by
istockphoto graphic

 

istockphoto graphic

While I don’t think we need another term for taking pictures — “pocketography” is worse than “iPhonography” — it is useful to get a good overview on ways imaging is evolving.

User-generated imagery source iStockphoto is looking at the continued growth of mobile imaging with a new infographic showing there are:

• 322 million mobile subscriptions in the U.S., and 6 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide;

• 140 billion total photos on Facebook; 40 million daily uploads to Instagram.

“Access to sophisticated social media applications and smartphone cameras has blazed the trail for “pocketography,” the company says, “prompting the rise of new image sharing sites and a trend towards mobile journalism.”

Here’s the full infographic:
Pocketography: the democratization of photography, iStock visual trends, March 2013

 

Filed Under: Trends Tagged With:

BeFunky: From photo editor to photo network

March 20, 2013 by
remarkable

My friend Hans Hartman, president of Suite48 Analytics, emailed me the other day to give me some news about mobile photo app provider BeFunky. I suggested he share his thoughts with you, too, with a guest editor post. He writes:

I have a soft spot for BeFunky.

First, they are the developers of a photo editing web service and mobile photo apps, founded in Turkey. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in Turkey in the past and have come to love the country, in particular its citizens. And how many high tech companies really have their roots in Turkey?  (Half the team moved to San Francisco early last year, abandoning the Bosporus for the Golden Gate).

Second, I’m intrigued by teens’ use of photos. In the early 2000s I was co-founder of Piczo, a teen photo-sharing site that grew exponentially for a long time – before these highly engaged and photo-crazy teens moved en masse to the next big thing, which was Beboo.

BeFunky serves a similar young audience: 64% of their users are between 15-24; 83% are under 35. Overall, BeFunky now has 13 million users, of which 2 M were registered through their web service and 11M through their iOS and Android apps.

In our Photo/Video Apps Market Analysis January Report BeFunky ranked 19th among the free iPhone photo app downloads in the US and 46th among the free Android photo apps.

More than BeFunky’s current usage, their exponential growth is most remarkable: remarkable

At this point, BeFunky users generate more than 50M photos per month:

remar 50M per month

The amazing thing?  While hockey stick growth of this nature is not exceptional among social networks in their early stages, BeFunky so far has been a web and app photo editor: it’s photo editing – not typically a viral feature – by these young photo enthusiasts that has spurred BeFunky’s growth.

remar spurred beFunkys growth

Today, the company announced its next step.

“We want BeFunky to become a new medium for not only editing, but also for viewing and publishing photos,” says Tekin Tatar, CEO and co-founder. In a push to become a destination site/app for photos, BeFunky added these features:

  • Users can view photos by topic area (“Channels”), even if they are not logged in – akin to YouTube’s channels. They can also subscribe to these channels when they are logged in.
  • BeFunky uses a sophisticated algorithm that determines which photos are more prominently displayed, taking into account how the community likes and interacts with the photos – akin to Reddit.
  • Users can follow other users and view their photos – akin to Instagram.

This hybrid YouTube-Reddit-Instagram approach, combined with BeFunky’s existing stable of photo enhancement features, should lead to more viral growth in the months to come, according to Tatar.

We’ll keep a close eye on them!

Hans Hartman is president of Suite 48 Analytics, a leading research and analysis firm for the mobile photography market.

 

Filed Under: Mobile imaging, Product News, Trends Tagged With: , , ,

U.S. Bank launches Mobile Photo BillPay

March 7, 2013 by
us bank

100322_N90_BOW_PF_#1Band_no_pings_FL_PHO-10-0110 001

us bank

Want to take a picture to pay your bills? No, you won’t earn money by snapping the shot — but you can now use your camera phone to setup faster financial transactions.

Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp says it is the first major bank in the United States to deliver Mobile Photo BillPay to its customers. The feature allows customers to set up bill payments by snapping a picture of their bills with their smartphone or tablet. “By eliminating the need to manually enter payment information, it makes adding or transferring billers and paying bills a snap,” the bank says.

Research forecasts Mobile Photo Bill Pay adoption to reach 33 percent among adult U.S. consumers by 2018, the bank adds, and result in 1.4 billion bills migrating to the mobile channel. A study suggests that more than 1 in 5 customers would use this feature.

U.S. Bank is the Mobile Photo Bill Pay technology from Mitek Systems which “automatically and securely extracts relevant information from the paper bill and populates the fields required to make a mobile payment.”

 

 

Filed Under: Business, Trends
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