30 July 03

Taiwan anticipates to manufacture 40 percent of digital still cameras worldwide in 2004, which would translate into shipments of over 21 million units, the Taiwan-based Photonics Industry and Technology. Development Association (PIDA). announced.

This year, shipments of Taiwan DSC camera manufacturers will surpass 15 million pieces, accounting for about 37 percent of the global market, while Japan is expected to manufacture the lion`s share of 63 percent, PIDA analyst Michael Yeh said.

According to the Japan-based Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA), Japanese companies sold 24,55 million DSCs last year and 13,376 million units in the first five months of 2003, Yeh said, adding that those number are high than his associations`s estimates.

Leading the global DSC market, Japan has continued to concentrate on targeting the high-end market. Units with 5 MegaPixels or higher resolutions were expected to account for almost 20 percent of Japanese production in the second quartr of this year, comparedto 10 percent in the first quarter, PIDA said, quoting CEPA data.

China continues to become a high growth market with sales forecasted to reach more than 1 million cameras this year, up from 618,000 in 2002, according to figures supplied by the China Center of Information Industry Development (CCID).

In related news, the MIC said that global shipments of digital still cameras in 2002 for the first time exceeded the shipment of analog cameras.

Lai Yu-chang, an analyst with the center, suggested that, with digitalization setting the trend in the information industry, the global digital market would grow by over 15 percent each year and achieve an compound annual growth rate of 18 percent, making it one of the most prominent industries in the information technology sector.

Lai further predicted that cameras with resolutions of 4 million pixels and above would become the mainstream next year, after prices drop to below US$400. He stressed that Japanese companies are now making cameras with a resolution of 7 million pixels supported by CCD, a more advanced sensor technology.

"The Japanese are doing that despite the fact that human eyes cannot even tell the difference between pictures with 3.3 million and 7 million pixels," he said.