"Worldwide Consumer Digital Camera Market Accrues Over $5 Billion in Street Valued Revenue in 2001"

According to a new report produced by Imerge Consulting Group LLC, the worldwide consumer digital camera market proved it was no longer a nascent market and accrued over $5 billion in street valued revenue in 2001 with North America accounting for over 43% of worldwide street revenue or over $2 billion. Unit and revenue growth in 2001 was neither as good, nor as bad as some suspected. Worldwide consumer digital cameras experienced 30.7% growth compared to North America at 27.4% and led the IT/consumer products industries in units sold, behind DVD players. "Compared to negative growth rates experienced by the PC industry and flat growth in other sectors such as mobile phones, the consumer digital camera industry reflects one of the healthiest sectors in all of IT", says Ron Tussy, Principal Analyst at Imerge Consulting Group LLC.

According to Imerge, North American unit growth in 2001 was nearly half that of 2000 and this was not enough growth to offset declining ASPs, which dropped -14.1% from 2000, forcing street revenue in this sector down to 24.3% growth. With units and ASPs sinking simultaneously, many vendors are currently experiencing inelastic business models and profitable business models in this sector are existent but scarce. Year 2001 marked the second consecutive year that unit and revenue growth percentage rates declined in the consumer digital camera market due to global economic constraints, the effect of 9/11 and the fact that digital camera penetration is lacking solutions which enable it to fully crack core consumers groups. But a $5 billion industry is one that can be considered to be maturing.

In 2001, identical numbers of consumer digital camera models were introduced to the North American market as in 2000, spawning two new technology segments, driven upward by pixel counts. Year 2001 was also a year that saw a shuffling of the deck regarding vendor unit share in North America and Europe. The big three worldwide vendors, Sony, Olympus and Fujifilm saw their market share erode somewhat to "upstarts" like Nikon, Canon, Kodak and Minolta.

Given dour global economic conditions, it might be assumed that development capital would be tightly budgeted in this sector, stymieing R & D and thwarting new product innovation. While the "digital camera franchise" periphery products became virtually non-existent in 2001, camera vendors stuck to their core efficiencies and R & D to produce new product designs that pushed size, resolution and weight constraints and established new benchmarks in every category.

Innovation discussed in this report includes microelectronics and micro-camera designs, new sensor technologies, wireless photography (capture capable cell phones) lens assemblies for these devices, GPS/location based services for consumer cameras, new OLED LCD technologies, new lens technologies working in tandem with CCD sensors, new CMOS sensors and buffering and faster read/write times on media cards.


This report also analyzes the worldwide consumer digital camera market and it's dynamic, including 2001-2006 forecast units, (actual and forecast) ASV, (actual and forecast) street value, (actual and forecast) top 10 market share, channel dynamics, and segmentation and adoption dynamics. For North America this report analyses the North America market and it's dynamic, 2001-2006 forecast units, (actual and forecast) ASV, (actual and forecast) street value, (actual and forecast) top 10 market share, channel dynamics, and segmentation and adoption dynamics. The Worldwide Consumer Digital Camera Forecast and Market Overview, 2001-2006 also includes forecasts for Asia Pacific (Japan included), Europe and ROW 2001-2006 units, (actual and forecast) ASV, (actual and forecast) street value, (actual and forecast).

This 100 page, full color, bound report also includes insights into consumer digital camera manufacturing and segmented modeling including sections regarding every key consumer digital camera component and power budgets associated with these components, component costs, vendor FOB and landed costs per segment of camera, channel margins per segment, units per channel per segment forecast and vendor business models.

The Worldwide Consumer Digital Camera Forecast and Market Overview, 2001-2006 also includes technology segmentation, Worldwide and North America top ten market share, (units and percentages) and forecasts year to year growth rates for units, and compound average growth rates for units, ASV and street revenue. This thorough report also identifies channel penetration percentages for each technology segment. Further, this report identifies the "killer apps for 2001 and beyond" and much more.

The Imerge Consulting Group LLC Worldwide Consumer Digital Camera Forecast and Market Overview has become an essential, affordable tool for all consumer digital camera vendors, manufacturers, component suppliers, assemblers/ODM/OEM providers, VCs and peripheral vendors for forecasting, strategic and product planning/development and to keep abreast of the market from an ultimate insider's perspective.

For further details and pricing please contact Imerge Consulting Group LLC at www.imergeconsulting.com or emailing [email protected] or by calling 650-631-5737

�-2002 Imerge Consulting Group LLC