>> Sanyo is the world's largest digital camera manufacturer at about 20 >> million units last year. virtually none of their cameras are sold under >> the Sanyo brand name or any brand name owned by Sanyo.
>Where did you hear this? I'm curious about what cameras they've made. >chris Probably nothing we've heard of. Those little cheap digital P&S things probably sell a lot, and there are far fewer companies actually making them than putting their names on them. I understand that something like 50 million "digital cameras" were sold last year, but that is almost certainly primarily webcams, cheap P&Ses, etc. SLRs must be a minority of "camera" sales. Digital imaging is becoming pervasive because at the webcam level it is small enough and cheap enough to put almost anywhere (phones, PDAs, etc). I myself have a handful of webcams, a pencam-gadget, a $100 HP digital P&S, and a PDA-cam. >Topping it off, for the non computer user, they are getting all their >files printed anyway, which negates the only possible financial >advantage of the digital camera. >William Robb It still saves the cost of film and developing. The break-even point for a cheap digital camera is a lot lower than for a DSLR, perhaps low enough to actually save money for an active P&S user given the roughly $10 per roll to buy C-41 film and have it processed. As was pointed out, some of them may NOT be getting files printed at all, and just keeping them on the computer and e-mailing them to friends. DJE
