Smartphones Are Making Digital Cameras Obsolete

By John Consoli -- Broadcasting & Cable, 9/5/2012 2:20:34 PM

Brand Keys, the research company that specializes in measuring consumer loyalty and engagement with brands, estimates that 55% of photos and videos are now shot with smartphones, up 20% from last year, according to company president Robert Passikoff.

And that does not bode well for the various brands of digital SLR and digital point-and-shoot cameras.

"The quality of smartphone photos and videos [is] virtually indistinguishable from dedicated digital imaging devices," Passikoff says. "If you combine that with the smartphones' ability to review, edit and transmit immediately, digital cameras are rapidly becoming obsolete."

And that sounds like an opportunity for smartphone makers to begin targeting some of their marketing dollars on their products' ability to replace traditional cameras. But Passikoff's data should also ring a bell in the heads of the camera makers who need to protect their turf from further erosion-if that's now possible.

Passikoff doesn't know if the camera makers can do it. "They can look at the other side of the usage ratio and say that 45% of photos and videos are still being shot with traditional cameras...but with newer smartphones in sight and consumer expectations constantly on the rise, one cannot be precisely sure how long the retail category will remain," he says.

"The photographer Ernst Haas once noted that ‘there is only you and your camera,'" Passikoff adds. "But with the increase in picture quality and the ubiquity of we-do-everything smartphones taking the place of dedicated digital cameras, we may soon have to amend that to ‘there's only you and your phone.'"

Based on Brand Keys' Customer Loyalty Engagement Index, here is how the digital camera brands rank:

Digital SLR Cameras:

1. Canon
2. Nikon, Olympus, Leica
5. Sony
6. Pentax
7. Panasonic
8. Fuji

Digital Point-and-Shoot Cameras:

1. Canon
2. Nikon
3. Panasonic
4. Sony
5. Casio
6. Samsung
7. Fuji
8. Pentax
9. Olympus
10. Kodak