Camera market struggling.

[Guest DaveW]

Your well out of it BP since it looks as if the conventional digital camera market has now matured and people are not upgrading so much anymore, exacerbated by the lower end using camera phones instead, plus the recession. The DSLR market has now become more like the old film camera market where people no longer feel the need to constantly upgrade since their present camera images are good enough for their purpose:-

 

http://www.petapixel.com/2013/02/07/nikon-stock-plummets-19-biggest-drop-since-1985/

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/30/us-canon-earnings-idUSBRE90T07F20130130

 

Not the best time for Jessops to start up again. Canon's answer to the mirror less camera however is:- 

 

http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/21/canon-eos-rebel-sl1-t5i/

 

Time will tell if they got it right.

Edited April 2, 2013 by DaveW

[Black Pearl]

Odd times indeed.

I was in my old store yesterday. Stock arrives today and its scheduled to open Tuesday. Looks like a much tighter ran ship with none of the head office bloat or under performing stores to leach profits.

Be interesting to see how it goes.

[NannyFerret]

I was talking to a friend about it and we both think that people have  to get the cheapest deal that they can  these days as money is getting tight for many If they can get the same camera off the internet for maybe £50 or £100 cheaper, then that's the way things will be in the future. .
I told him about you BP and that  and said you had been offered your job back BP.and he said that you made the right choice in staying out of it too.

[Guest DaveW]

We forget that whatever our trades or professions are they changed over time. The difference in the past was they changed more slowly so you could rely on your trade or profession lasting your lifetime. But even as a joiner my trade changed a great deal over my working life, with wooden window frames and doors and their repair giving way to UPVC so removing much of our traditional work. 

 

So too I am afraid will much of the high street be closing due to people buying online unless local authorities realise in this day and age you cannot rate retail premised any greater per square foot than you do commercial warehouses, since modern day internet sales do not demand highly rated high street shops, or loads of assistants, but simply automated parcel lines like Amazon has with a few warehousemen and forklift drivers.

 

Much of industrial production has now been deskilled, robotised and computerised. The occupations still in the stone age that have yet to be simplified, deskilled, robotised and computerised are the professions, but it is inevitable it will eventually be their turn.  For instance with more teaching going online as with the Open University and things like the law being eventually simplified and written in plain English, therefore less lawyers and legal training are needed, therefore their numbers and pay rates will fall. It's not that many years ago when people were still being employed to write every Parliamentary Bill in Norman French through tradition and some parts still are, even though nobody for generations has normally spoken it.  Therefore they have simply been filed away taking up expensive storage space since nobody would ever read them again, only the English version.

 

http://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/norman-french/

 

However in order for the country to be internationally competitive in future and manufacturing support them Britain's professions will have to slim down as industry has done, plus modernise and get rid of all those archaic work practices and traditions such as judges and lawyers in wigs etc and graduates in mortar boards they have so far clung to for far too long.  I am afraid you cannot stop the march of technology, even though the Luddites in every industry or profession may try.  Somebody has always to start a tradition, but it is inevitable somebody will eventually end it as being no longer relevant.  The world is changing faster than in the past, so we can no longer wait for the death of the old practitioners before we dispense with outdated work methods or traditions and traditional job demarcations.