Price war reaches high-end cameras
When I bought my first Nikon professional digital camera 2-3 years ago, I was often smiled at condescendingly. Digital photography would never take over the professional arena. I always answered with the conviction that soon nobody would talk about analogue cameras any more, but instead about the price drop in digital photography. This is a similar principle to that in the PC and laptop business, or the chip industry in general. These areas are traditionally characterised by falling prices together with simultaneous increase in the products’ performance. What I did not however foresee was the fact that brand loyalty should become quite irrelevant in the area of top professional cameras. The producers move production to the “low-wage countries”, and the products are even produced in the same factories in South-East Asia as the competition. The further development of new technologies may even be carried out together via “joint venture” projects. This will accelerate the downwards spiral in camera prices even further, and lead to take-overs and fusions, as well as bankruptcies. The consumer can enjoy the falling prices, but it is not clear to me that the quality of the products will remain stable. One professional digital camera has already died on me during use, due to production defects. It was naturally repaired free of charge by the manufacturer, but this is of little use if the camera breaks while in action. As a committed digital photographer, however, I must admit that the increasing flood of pictures – also from mobile phones – will cause the demand for quality photographs to sink in the future. Potential customers will also want to push down the price for pictures, as there is a large choice of more or less similar motifs available free on the internet. The career of photographer will certainly become less important.
WHO STILL TALKS ABOUT ANALOGUE CAMERAS???
An article from the Financial Times Deutschland
Winners in the camera manufacturers competition:
Links to camera manufacturers – though only Canon and Nikon are ahead in the area of top professional cameras:
