By 2014, smart phones and tablets will push down the traditional handheld product market

According to IHS iSuppli's consumer platform report, with its diverse functions and features, smart phones, tablet PCs and other multi-use products will continue to erode the sales of digital cameras and other specialized consumer electronics products, eventually leading to these traditional media in 2015. The permanent decline of the media-rendering device market.

A research report shows that in 2011, the combined market share of smart phones and tablet computers in the field of media reproduction exceeded the total market of traditional products, including digital cameras, video cameras, handheld game players, and portable media players. Last year, the market share of smart phones was as high as 55%, while the media tablet market reached a 8% share in just one year, the most prominent being the Apple iPad. In contrast, the overall situation of the older traditional media devices listed is rather inferior: the share of portable media players is 17%, the share of digital cameras is 14%, the share of handheld game machines is 4%, and the share of cameras is 2%. .

By 2015, the advantages of smart phones and tablets will become more prominent, and their respective share of other media devices will shrink, as shown in Table 1.


Indeed, handheld devices can provide consumers with superior content quality based on core applications. Even so, the market for dedicated platforms such as cameras and game consoles is shrinking because consumers are now eager for versatile products, preferring to own such multi-purpose devices, rather than having multiple devices that mainly focus on one form of content presentation. IHS believes that smartphones and tablets are obviously all-purpose flexible devices, so their popularity and sales are rising.

In the field of handheld games, Microsoft recently launched its Windows 7 Phone, Sony launched the Xperia Play mobile phone, clearly shows that the two companies are grabbing market share from specialized handheld game platforms such as Nintendo DS. The world’s best-selling smartphone, the iPhone, is also playing a major role in this field. It provides a lot of games through the Apple App Store.

Alarms in the handheld game space first appeared in 2011, when casual gamers began switching from dedicated gaming consoles to tablets and smartphones, but 2012 may be the first year that handset sales have been affected by this change. In 2014, shipments and sales of dedicated handheld game consoles will begin to decline, while smartphones and tablets continue to rise.

In particular, as the tablet computer's image hardware becomes more powerful and its screen is larger, it further attracts consumers to turn and the iPad and other media tablets will pose an absolute threat to handheld game consoles.

As for cameras, shipments of camera phones have surpassed that of digital cameras and camcorders. The market share of camera phones in the overall image capture market in 2011 is estimated to be as high as 89%. This is mainly due to the high popularity of mobile phones, and most people currently have mobile phones with at least one main camera. Low-end digital cameras are especially vulnerable to impact, and they are facing a strong squeeze from mobile phone cameras. For many consumers, cell phone cameras have become the main camera. Since the last soaring in 2010, digital camera shipments have continued to decline, and shipments in this area will decrease by about 40 million in 2010-2015.

However, there are still opportunities in the field of dedicated digital cameras, especially for high-end models such as digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras. The DSLR camera has excellent picture quality and a variety of lens options. Wi-Fi-enabled cameras may also grow. Such cameras can send photos wirelessly from the Internet, a PC, or a printer. Wi-Fi cameras will be able to compete with smartphones with this feature. Now smart phones can quickly upload photos to social networks.

Wi-Fi may become a trend on many high-resolution cameras. The technology of these cameras has evolved to support the Web more than ever, making it easier to share video and send videos to websites such as You-Tube. However, camera shipments are expected to decline from 2014 onwards.

The field of portable media players has rapidly declined since at least 2010. The growth rate of this market will not only decrease, but also accelerate the decline. In 2015, the shipment volume will decrease by nearly 100 million compared with 2010. Once extremely popular portable media players are in an irreversible down trend, not because people are no longer interested in music, but because of smart phones and other products more features, including music playback capabilities.

Even high-end players such as the Apple iPod could not escape this unfavorable trend that swept the entire industry. In the foreseeable future, this extremely popular product could not stop the market from falling.

For these traditional media reproduction devices, the reality is that multi-purpose devices such as smart phones and tablets will gain a firm footing. IHS believes that the overall consumer electronics market is undergoing a transformation and that “everything is possible” is now a prerequisite for any new product entering the handheld field.

Pamela Tufegdzic is a Consumer Electronics Analyst at IHS.