Interesting statistics


For those interested, here are some statistics recently released by the Canadian Imaging Trade Association (CITA).

In 1999, digital cameras made up 6% of reloadable cameras sold.
In 2003, digital cameras made up 67% of reloadable cameras sold.

For those of you who like hard numbers, 1,500,000 digital cameras were sold in Canada in 2003.

CITA says film camera sales declined by 35% to 739,000 cameras. Of these, 95% were 35mm - both P&S & SLRs. The balance were medium format and large format cameras. APS camera sales were "much diminished" with no figures given. CITA forecasts film camera sales will drop to 500,000 this year, in Canada.

Film sales were down by 15.1% over 2002, to 46,300,000 rolls. Of these, 4.7 million were APS films. Professional film sales declined by 185 over 2002. CITA forecasts a further decline of 18% in film sales this year, with APS dropping by 20%.

FWIW, unit sales of film scanners dropped 3.5% last year over 2002.

Two very interesting surprises emerged from all of this.

[1] That digital cameras are now the #2 home electronics product after television (in dollar sales). They now surpass the annual sales of computers, printers, PDA's and DVD players.

[2] That film based single use camera sales grew 16% to 7.7 million units! And CITA predicts a further increase to 8.7 million units in Canada by years end!

What does all of this mean to the Luddites on this list still using film based cameras?

Given that Canada consumes roughly 5% of the US in such things, despite having roughly 10% of the population, you can probably safely multiply Canadian figures by 20 to get US figures. European figures are likely about 80% of US consumption. The rest of the world roughly equals Europe.

So, if Canada consumes 37 million rolls this year, that equates to roughly 1,900,000,000 rolls of 35 mm film will be sold, world wide this year.

That's a lot of lolly, at $5 (3 Euro) per roll!

Yes, film cameras are being displaced at an alarming rate by digital ones... but there remains a huge installed base of 35mm cameras. Favourite emulsions will depart, but film, overall is likely to be with us a long time. Simple business says there is a lot of money to be made making film, for a good long time to come.

Use it or lose it! (I've just shot my 72nd roll of film for this year... I'm doing my bit!)
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David Young,     | égalité, liberté,
Victoria, CANADA | fraternité et Beaujolais.

Personal Web-site at:
        http://www.horizon.bc.ca/~dnr
Leica Reflex Forum web-page:
        http://www.horizon.bc.ca/~dnr/lrflex.htm

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