Digital Cameras

Mainland China and Taiwan digital camera manufacturers are forecast to boost production by 20% in the next 12 months. Prices are expected to remain flat or to fall.

Which suppliers are best positioned to meet your needs in this time of rapid industry change?

You'll find the answers in this report, as it provides you with profiles of 66 major manufacturers, including in-depth findings from in-person tours of 22 factories.

Plus, you'll also gain essential industry insights, including advance information on new products, price trends, R&D plans and other key issues that will impact your digital camera sourcing in 2005.

What you'll get

In-depth profiles of 22 leading digital camera suppliers in mainland China and Taiwan, including details on production capacities, export markets, quality standards and new products. Based on personal factory visits and interviews with senior managers, this information is available nowhere else

Brief profile tables of 44 additional producers, highlighting key sourcing data such as manufacturing processes, monthly output figures and R&D initiatives

A detailed product gallery featuring key specifications and full-color pictures of 223 top-selling digital still cameras, digital video cameras and digital PC cameras

The results of Global Sources' latest supplier survey, forecasting price, product, production and R&D trends for the next 12 months

This report covers: digital still cameras, digital video cameras and digital PC cameras

How you'll benefit

Improve your decision-making by comparing different suppliers' product mixes, use of in-house versus outsourced processes and more

Identify buyer profiles, export markets and product trends of the leading digital camera manufacturers in mainland China and Taiwan

Discover which producers have partnered with technical powerhouses like Kodak, Minolta, NEC and Sony. See how those partnerships are impacting your sourcing options

Quickly and easily pre-qualify your next suppliers with listings of all featured manufacturers, including comparative statistics, product-range details and verified contact information

When you purchase this China Sourcing Report, you'll also get online access — at no extra charge — to complete details of all featured suppliers in it. These details can be filtered and sorted as you wish.

After dispatching your report, we'll send you a personal user ID and password. Just go to Global Sources Online to login and access this valuable new feature.

Executive summary

The global digital camera business was estimated to be worth US$24 billion in 2004. A significant part of this business comes from mainland China and Taiwan — regions which have become known as major digital camera supply bases over the past few years. Industry analysts regard mainland China as being the primary source of low-cost digital cameras. Taiwan, for its part, is credited with a 30 percent share of the digital camera market, following industry leader Japan.

According to the China Culture & Office Equipment Professional Association, mainland China produced 73 million digital cameras in 2004. Of this volume, 61 million units were exported to Europe, the United States and Japan.

In the same period, according to the Market Intelligence Center in Taiwan, the production output of companies with headquarters on the island totaled 21 million units, which were all exported. Much of this volume was produced in factories in mainland China.

Digital camera manufacture in mainland China and Taiwan is heavily OEM or ODM-oriented.

This report covers 66 digital camera manufacturers in mainland China and Taiwan. Global Sources researchers and market analysts interviewed key officers of these companies about their manufacturing capability as well as their production, export and price projections for the next 12 months. In addition, factories of 22 of these makers were visited by Global Sources researchers who observed manufacturing processes first-hand.

Findings of this report include:

Production hubs
In mainland China, Guangdong is the primary manufacturing center. The cities of Shenzhen, Dongguan, Guangzhou and Huizhou in this province host key industry players. An emerging production center is Tianjin province.

Taiwan makers have moved digital camera production to the mainland.

Export capability
Mainland China and Taiwan digital camera makers are export-oriented. Some 30 to 60 percent of makers' revenues are attributed to shipments worldwide.

Approximately 65 percent of interviewed mainland China manufacturers do business with OEM buyers.

For Taiwan-based companies, OEM comprises 90 percent of their business.

Manufacturing capability
In 2004, mainland China-headquartered makers surveyed in this report produced some 7 million digital still cameras. Their output of digital PC cameras and digital video cameras in the same period reached 1.82 million and 1.12 million units respectively.

Taiwan-headquartered makers' output for the same period was 1.27 million digital still cameras, 1.25 million digital PC cameras and 710,000 digital video cameras.

Many of the surveyed mainland and Taiwan makers have an unused capacity of at least 25 percent.

Industry overview

Digital cameras are among the most dynamic of electronic products. Their growth is driven by developments in consumer electronics such as portability, convergence of functions, faster transmission of data, interconnectivity and enhanced imaging and audio technologies.

The global digital camera business was estimated to be a US$24-billion industry in 2004. According to forecasts from Taiwan's Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA), global digital camera shipments in 2005 will grow by 20.8 percent to 72.2 million units. Latest forecasts by US-based imaging industry analyst Lyra Research, put digital camera shipments at 100 million units by 2008.

The top three regions in terms of sales are Europe, the United States and Japan. Asia ex-Japan is also a booming market.

Mainland China and Taiwan have become major supply bases of digital camera products in recent years. Mainland China is a key source of low-cost digital cameras, with an estimated production output of 73 million units in 2004 and around 61 million units in shipments, according to the China Culture and Office Equipment Professional Association. Around 80 percent of digital cameras produced on the mainland are exported, with 81 percent as OEM/ ODM orders.

Taiwan ranked second to Japan in the global supply of digital still cameras in 2004, accounting for approximately 30 percent of global digital camera production. According to the Taiwan-based Photonics Industry and Technology Development Association, 90 percent of Taiwan makers are involved in the OEM and ODM business.

Taiwan makers, however, are still heavily dependent on Japan-based companies for their business and technology needs.

Report coverage
This report is an update of Global Sources' Market Intelligence Report "Digital Cameras and Accessories: Supplier capability in mainland China and Taiwan," released in July 2004.

The update provides an overview of the production and export capabilities of digital camera makers in mainland China and Taiwan, and also features one manufacturer from South Korea.

It covers 66 companies, with in-depth profiles of 22 manufacturers. Of these 22 companies, 17 are from mainland China and five are from Taiwan.

Global Sources' market analysts conducted face-to-face interviews with key officials at these producers and also visited their factories.

The other 44 companies featured gave Global Sources key corporate information on their current production, capacities, exports and pricing levels, as well as quality-control and research-and-development activities.

They also disclosed some of their capacity expansion plans for 2005 and beyond.

Many of the digital cameras produced by Taiwan-headquartered companies are made in mainland China and are covered by mainland China's trade statistics.

In this report, however, Global Sources analyzes data based on the ownership of the companies, not on the location of their production bases. Moreover analysis is limited to information provided by the respondent suppliers.

The report covers four main product lines: digital still cameras with resolutions below 3MP, digital still cameras with resolutions of 3MP and higher, digital video cameras and digital PC cameras.

Samples of supplier profile

Advanced Plus Technology Co. Ltd
Advanced Plus Technology Co. Ltd (ADPK) was founded in 1999 and set up its first factory in Shenzhen in the Fuyuan industrial district. Today, the Taiwan-based company operates four factories — two for the manufacture of digital camera products, one for chipset solutions, and another for laser products including LED keychains and pointers.

Its camera product line includes professional digital cameras, PC cameras, digital video cameras, digital cameras with an MP3 player, and binoculars with a built-in digital camera. It also offers calculators and mini-phones, digital photo displays, card readers with a TV-out function and Bluetooth-enabled wireless headsets. ADPK reported total annual exports of US$30 million in 2003, which rose to US$50 million in 2004. North America takes 80 percent of its exports.

ADPK is primarily OEM and ODM-oriented. Eighty percent of its output goes to ODM clients and 20 percent to OEM buyers. One of its key clients is United States retail chain, Wal-Mart.

Manufacturing capability
ADPK's four factories in Shenzhen have a combined floor area of 7,000sqm and house 12 production lines. There are 1,000 production workers out of a total workforce of 1,300. The ISO 9001-certified company first produced digital still cameras and PC cameras in 2000. Its monthly capacity for these lines is 600,000 units, with actual output at around 50 percent of capacity.

Of this, about 300,000 units are digital still cameras featuring below 3-mega-pixel resolution; 30,000 units are 3MP-and-above models; and 10,000 units are digital PC cameras.

Ninety percent of camera production is exported. Export revenue touched US$45 million in 2004 on sales of US$50 million.

Global Sources recently visited one of the two digital camera factories. All workshops at the 300-worker factory, which makes higher-end models, are dust-free, the air-conditioning is centralized and workers are required to wear anti-static clothing and footwear. Manual insertion and soldering, lens assembly, testing, finished product assembly and packing are done here.

There are three manual insertion and soldering lines for PCB assembly. The testing line is equipped with five computers installed with professional testing software. There is a separate assembly line for sample products or customized models. The finishing workshop has multiple silkscreen and spray-painting machines.

Cosmetic design, final assembly, QC/QA and R&D are done in-house but other processes such as mold-making, plastic injection, metal stamping and surface mounted sensor-module production are outsourced.

QC & R&D
ADPK employs 80 QC/QA technicians spread out among its four factories. The digital camera line alone has 40 QA personnel. Testing parameters comply with Level 2 of MIL-STD-105Z standards. Products carry CE and FCC quality approvals. IQC is done in a separate room, measuring about 150sqm, where all incoming material and outsourced components such as surface-mounted PCBs are checked for quality. Testing instruments include oscilloscopes and test racks.

Sample of product gallery

Digital still cameras (Below 3MP) Achievecn Model name: AC-2187 FOB price (US$): 20 Release date: 2004 Minimum order (units): 1,000 Guarantee/Warranty (months): 24 Sensor type: CMOS Zoom: 3x optical Memory type: SDRAM Battery type: 1 x AAA

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