Has the digital camera bubble burst?

Has the bubble burst? Is that why camera sales in N. America are down by 43%? is an interesting articles about the future of photography, basically predicting the doom of consumer DSLRs. It tells that in future dedicated cameras & pixel peepers will be more like high fidelity audio, which used to be common selling point in 1970s, 80s and early 90s, but now only some geeks care about audio quality. Now all the cameras that are coming out in the hobbyist, enthusiast, semi-pro and pro markets are equally good at exceeding all the measuring metrics that the coalesced hive have set down for “good enough.” The future is smaller, more portable, more disposable and mirrorless. Nowadays you can take professional level (“good enough photos”) using consumer level cameras and smart phones.

DSLR sales were down in, worldwide, by 18.5% according to CIPA. The total decline in the entire dedicated camera market is closer to 43.5%. It seems like that only those who have a strong brand and are competitive on price will last – and only Canon, Nikon and Sony fullfil that criteria. Panasonic, Fujifilm and Olympus are all losing money on cameras. Canon and Nikon can get by on advanced camera sales.

There are several articles written on the same topic, so it is good idea to check them all: http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.be/2013/08/has-bubble-burst-is-that-why-camera.html and http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.be/2013/10/the-graying-of-traditional-photography.html and http://www.eoshd.com/content/11409/consumer-dslrs-dead-5-years and http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/pdn_photoplus_2013.shtml and http://petapixel.com/2013/12/30/report-claims-nikon-canon-sony-will-survive-smartphone-revolution/