Standard Definition Products to Keep the Digital Broadcast and Cinematography Cameras Market Buoyant during Long Sales Cycles

Frost: The remarkable technological advances made in the digital broadcast and cinematography cameras market to digitize the content creation process may hold exciting market potential, but their prohibitive prices do not encourage frequent sales. Buyers of both premium high definition (HD) and low-end standard definition (SD) cameras are averse to making rapid upgrades, thereby lengthening the sales cycle to two to four years. The world Digital Broadcast and Cinematography Camera Market was just shy of the $300 million mark in 2005 and is likely to double in size by 2012.

Most successful vendors in the market have a global strategy and a product line that caters to customers with varied buying power. Many vendors, however, seek to cater only to the HD market as it offers them higher margins and encourages customers to transition to multi-format and HD cameras.

Although most vendors are attempting to move away from SD, the strong demand for this technology among small and local broadcasters compel them to market it, even though it threatens to cannibalize sales of their HD product line. By maintaining their SD markets, vendors will be able to sustain customer loyalty and revenues despite the reduced margins.

Global vendors can deal with the downturn in sales by periodically shifting their regional focus, since the broadcast camera market is extremely cyclical geographically. Vendors can also achieve economies of scale by addressing the Pro AV and digital news gathering (DNG) markets with inexpensive and portable digital cameras.

With the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandating broadcasters to switch from analog to digital broadcasts by 2008, the cost-conservative market is being further driven to make heavy investments in infrastructure that will enable digitized broadcasts. However, this mandate has generated huge demand for better solutions with greater applications.

Vendors need to emphasize that moving from a physical archive to a digital one coupled with real time collaboration capabilities helps drive the bottom line down. The tremendous bit rate savings that can be potentially had by emerging formats as well as better fault tolerance can be a very lucrative proposition for a price-conscious market.

Vendors also need to market digitized media’s more attractive features of flexibility and speed of access compared to other conventional sources of recording and playback such as videotape solutions. These benefits are especially apparent in applications such as instant replays, quick access to highlights, and player profiles.

The obvious advantages of digitized media notwithstanding, content owners are skeptical about adopting the technology due to glaring inadequacies in security. Hacking and piracy on the public domain are serious concerns, and market vendors need to work hard to allay customers’ concerns.

Advances in intrusion detection systems and intrusion prevention systems (IDS/IPS) on the perimeter as well as behavioral anomaly detection internally will go a long way in alleviating security issues.

Security technology is constantly keeping pace with requirements of the industry through better intelligence and constant refinements. Digital rights management solutions add a further layer of copy protection to prevent piracy, aiding rapid uptake of digital broadcast and cinematography cameras.

world Digital Broadcast and Cinematography Camera Market

Publ 20060313