SEOUL—Samsung Electronics Co., a widespread actor for an array of tech products from chips to smartphones, has a weakness: digital cameras.
As sales of point-and-shoot digital cameras continue to decline, a Korean record hulk is eyeing a technological change to squeeze some-more marketplace share.
The gamble is on a joining of smartphones and cameras. On Wednesday, Samsung denounced a Galaxy S4 zoom, a new chronicle of a top-of-the-range smartphone containing a high-quality camera with an visual wizz that extends out of a physique of a phone.
Smartphone cameras have softened in new years, though fortitude and wizz peculiarity continue to route dedicated cameras. Samsung is contrast a thought that a high-quality camera can now be packaged into a smartphone that’s slim adequate to interest to fussy phone customers.
Sharing a same simple program as a company’s Galaxy smartphones, a device comes during a time when a camera attention is struggling with plunging sales of digital cameras. By 2016, a digital camera marketplace will be three-fifths of what it was during a rise of scarcely 145 million units in 2010, investigate organisation IDC estimates.
Digital cameras are one of a few business segments where Samsung has unsuccessful to replicate a successful indication of elaborating from quick supporter to marketplace personality with a regulation of large investments, fit prolongation and distribution, and savvy marketing.
Samsung has capitalized on technological shifts in products formerly to safe forward of competitors, eclipsing Sony Corp. during a transition from massive cathode-ray tube televisions to prosaic row models and flitting Nokia Corp. in a pierce from underline phones to smartphones.
Lim Sun-hong, a comparison clamp boss with Samsung’s digital imaging business, pronounced he sees an event to mix a palliate of use and wireless connectivity of a smartphone with a design peculiarity of a absolute camera. The record allows consumers to fast share high-quality photos online.
“We see there is huge, outrageous intensity and an event for us, if we mix smartphones’ usability, portability, and connectivity to a camera industry,†Mr. Lim pronounced in a new interview.
Samsung entered a camera business in 1979, primarily operative with Minolta to furnish a indication called a XD-5. In 1986, Samsung expelled a initial Samsung-only camera called Winky.
When cameras shifted from film to digital, a association pushed some-more aggressively into a difficulty with new concepts such as a two-screen cameras with a arrangement on a front and behind of a camera to assistance people sketch themselves.
But Samsung has unsuccessful to hole a widespread marketplace position of leaders Nikon Corp. and Canon Inc. According to IDC, Samsung’s marketplace share in a digital-camera marketplace was 9.4% in 2012, trailing behind Canon’s 22.6%, Nikon’s 20.9% and Sony’s 14.8% share.
Samsung doesn’t mangle out a opening of a camera business, nonetheless analysts guess that a business is in a red. Results from a camera business are lumped together with a mobile business, that generated scarcely three-quarters of Samsung’s sum handling distinction in a initial quarter.
Samsung in 2009 introduced a initial Wi-Fi connected camera. And final year, it grown a new camera underneath a Galaxy brand, adding a 3G tie and marrying a normal camera with Google Inc.’s Android handling complement and a network of apps including photo-sharing services such as Instagram.
The thought of carrying a Web-connected camera isn’t new. Google Senior Vice President Andy Rubin, a creator of a Android handling complement used by Samsung, pronounced during a discussion in Tokyo in Apr that a open-source height was primarily designed for digital cameras, not smartphones.
But Samsung’s Mr. Lim pronounced a fact that so few cameras bond to a Web is another pointer of an attention that has grown complacent. He pronounced a camera attention presents a classical box of “innovator’s dilemma†with marketplace leaders reluctant to deliver new products that might bluster normal money cow products such as a digital single-lens reflex, or DSLR, cameras. With small marketplace share to protect, Samsung can means to take some-more risks, Mr. Lim said.
“Samsung is kind of in a good mark since we don’t wish to be good in cameras and lousy in mobile,†pronounced Chris Chute, investigate executive during IDC. “It’s improved to have it a other approach around and arrange of use what you’ve grown in imaging to addition your mobile business.â€
Write to Min-Jeong Lee during Daisuke.Wakabayashi@wsj.com
Article source: http://lincolntribune.com/?p=26762
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