Digital photo finish in camera wars

Year-on-year sales of digital cameras in Poland skyrocketed 94 percent in the third quarter of 2005, earning producers over EUR 53 (zł.204) million - an 80-percent rise over Q3 2004. That's according to market research firm IDC, whose latest report found that sales of digital cameras in Q3 2005 reached over 247,000 units, and predicts that Q4 sales figures will top 300,000. Consolidated sales in 2005 are expected to total 900,000 units, rising to a full one million units this year.

"The dynamic growth of the digital camera market is caused by the diversification in the range of products," Central Europe digital stills camera manager for Sony Poland, Daniel Czok, says, adding that producers are becoming more aggressive in their offers. "Customers are being given better quality for lower prices, which is boosting the boom even more since prices are currently decreasing by approximately 25 percent annually," he says.

Those efforts have triggered a huge shake-up within the market. In Q2 2005, the top three camera producers in Poland - HP, Olympus, and Nikon - were replaced in Q3 by Kodak, Sony and Canon.

"There is a race in Poland as producers try to outdo each other by means of resolutions in digital cameras," says Nickolay Grigorov, chief coordinator of the IDC report in Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa. "While in Q1 2005 the majority of digital cameras sold in stores had three-megapixel [MP] matrices, in Q2 and Q3, the bestsellers already had four MP and in the last quarter of the year people favored five-MP cameras most."

There is little evidence that the fierce competition for the Polish market will cool down any time soon. A recent report by InfoTrends, a technology research firm, found that sales of digital cameras should peak in the US this year, forcing producers to focus even more on emerging markets.