Pixiq

The headlines caught my eye, “Smartphones are officially killing cameras.” and “Are Phones About To Wipe Out The Digital Camera Industry?” What! The death of the digital camera industry? On top of the news this year about the earthquake in Japan and the trouble at Olympus, now there's this. Is this the end of photography as we know it? Well, after a minute or two I calmed down and began to read further to find out what was really being said and who said it.

The original story comes from a piece entitled “Consumers Now Take More Than a Quarter of All Photos and Videos on Smartphones According to The NPD Group.” It was posted on a web site—PRWeb--that publishes press releases. Press releases not news. Not reportage but PR. 

The NDP group describes itself as, 

“…the leading provider of reliable and comprehensive consumer and retail information for a wide range of industries. ..NPD helps our clients to identify new business opportunities and guide product development, marketing, sales, merchandising, and other functions. Information is available for the following industry sectors: automotive, beauty, entertainment, fashion, food, home and office, sports, technology, toys, video games, and wireless.”

In other words, it specializes in everything and anything that anybody pays for because they are a public relations firm, not a research organization.

People buy Smartphones for many reasons, not just for picture taking. On the other hand, people who buy cameras do not use them to make phone calls. The implication of the article is that people who normally buy cameras will give up their cameras and buy Smartphones instead. Shortly it will be the end of the digital camera industry.   

That’s a dramatic pronouncement. So how do they back it up? Well, from their “research.” Data coming from the mouths of babes, NDP friendly babes. 

“An online survey was fielded between November 11th - November 21st, 2011 to a U.S. representative sample of adults (18+) and teens (13-17) from NPD's Proprietary Online Registered Panel. Panel members were asked to visit the NPD Online Research Survey Site in order to complete and submit the survey. “

As an old rat runner, this set off alarm bells. Can you see the problem? Subjects “were asked to visit” the survey site. This means that respondents were a self-selected group of people who wanted to take the survey and were not "representative." or neutral. We don't know how many people responded to the survey but they all had a bias to help and be positive. If you didn’t give a crap about surveys or Smartphones, you didn’t go to the survey site with your bad attitude and bad thoughts went unrecorded. This isn’t science, it is bull, just PR puffery. 

Whatever the results of this survey were (the raw numbers were not in the press release), they were positive enough that Liz Cutting, executive director and senior imaging analyst at NPD could say without a doubt that, 

"There is no doubt that the smartphone is becoming 'good enough' much of the time; but thanks to mobile phones, more pictures are being taken than ever before." 

Now, I must be rapidly getting old and stupid because I don’t understand what Ms. Cutting is saying. Does she mean that Smartphones now take better pictures and that is why more pictures are being taken? Great but how does more pictures being taken kill off the digital camera industry? 

She continues," Consumers who use their mobile phones to take pictures and video were more likely to do so instead of their camera when capturing spontaneous moments, but for important events, single purpose cameras or camcorders are still largely the device of choice." 

Now think about this. What does the word spontaneous mean? Unplanned, impulsive, spur-of-the-moment.

In other words, it is that moment when little Billy barfs up his lunch while Mom is zooming down I-75 chatting on her Smartphone. She doesn’t need to have her digital camera with her, she just stops talking for a second, snaps a shot of the barf covered Billy and uploads it to Flickr.

This article was read by a “Smartphone” blogger who took the baton from NDP and happily went on his own rant predicting the end of digital cameras. I found it rather amusing that the blogger’s qualification in this field was his background as someone who tested mobile phones to destruction for ”many industry clients.“ 

Then based on some Flickr numbers (although hesaid that  “Flickr might not be the most cutting edge of social networks any more") and the NDP report, stated that, "the iPhone is by far the most popular camera and other smart phones are starting to follow suit.”

To this he added the coup de grace, 

“A professional photographer might not agree but for a layman like myself, you can now take pictures on your phone that are every bit as good – if not better – than an expensive camera.”  

To prove this point, he posted several out of focus food shots taken with his Smartphone.

Mother of God is there no end to this? Here's a person who says that as a layman who doesn’t know “s**t from Shinola” about photography, he knows that his Smartphone pictures are better than anything shot by a snobby, PRO-fessional with a big old expensive D...S...L...R.”

For me it is more evidence that the web is the playground for scores of irrational 8 year olds trapped in 40 year old bodies. 

I would like to see is some actual research on Smartphone use. Based simply on my own observations, I feel that more women are taking pictures with Smartphones and I suspect sharing lots of them with family and friends by putting those pictures on the web. But that’s my opinion based on nothing but my opinion. Perhaps someone one day will do the work, crunch some numbers and prove me right or wrong. 

However, even if I'm wrong, it is still a long way from being the death knell of the digital camera industry.