Smartphones drive compact cameras off the shelves

When camera-shop owner Gordon Yuen Tien-yau found two years ago that his Samsung phone could take very high-quality photos, he decided to add smartphones to the cameras on his shelves.

"I have no plan to turn my 50-year-old camera shop into a telephone retailer. However, diversification and quickly changing product lines to match customers' tastes have been the key to success for my shop over half a century," Yuen told the South China Morning Post.

Last year, 10 per cent of sales at his company - A&A Audio & Video Centre, which for the past five decades has focused on selling high-end cameras from top brands such as Leica, Nikon and Canon - came from smartphones made by Samsung Electronics, Apple, Sony and Nokia.

Yuen said the biggest victims of the market evolution were digital compact cameras, which made up only about 20 per cent of sales at his shop last year, down from about 70 per cent in 2007.

Research firm IDC projected compact camera sales worldwide this year were likely to fall more than 40 per cent from last year to fewer than 59 million. Camera makers such as Panasonic, Fujifilm and Olympus all reported substantial drops in compact camera sales last year.

"This trend only happened in the past two years, when some smartphone makers such as Samsung, Sony and Nokia put a lot of effort to improve the phone's camera features," Yuen said.

"Before, pictures taken by mobile phones were of very poor quality, so I insisted on using my camera to take pictures. But now, I use my phone for that all the time as the quality of the pictures is good and I can share them with my friends via WhatsApp or other social networks."