Suhit Gupta
08-16-2006, 10:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyid=2006-08-03T071255Z_01_N02324097_RTRUKOC_0_US-DIGITALCAMERAS-TECH.xml&src=rss' target='_blank'>http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyid=2006-08-03T071255Z_01_N02324097_RTRUKOC_0_US-DIGITALCAMERAS-TECH.xml&src=rss</a><br /><br /></div><i>"U.S. shipments of digital cameras grew 17 percent in the second quarter, fueled by gift-giving for graduating students and Father's Day, with Canon Inc. retaining its No. 1 rank in market share, according to an industry report. Some 6.3 million units were shipped in the quarter, research firm IDC said in its "U.S. Digital Camera Market Share Review" report. The growth showed that there was still life in that segment of the photography market, but also indicated that the boom days are almost over for the maturing product. Growth is already past its peak in Japan, and slowing in the United States as the excitement over cameras wanes and more consumers buy mobile phones with built-in picture-taking capabilities."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/dcships.bmp" /><br /><br />I have been doing a lot of research on digital photos and cameras over the last week (doing a random project) and this news really doesn't surprise me. I found some research that suggested that there are more cameras per person in the US to number of TVs per person by almost a factor of two, not counting cell phone cameras. Another study also said that there are almost 250-300 billion digital images currently and that cache is growing at the rate of about 45% per year. These are just nutty numbers. Hooray digital photography!