In the last 10-15
years,
photography
has exploded.

With the rise
of digital
imaging,
everyone is
taking
photos
nowadays.

Casio is one
of the
companies
that has been
driving this
shift, and
prospered
from doing so.

Interestingly, the company
had no experience of
producing cameras prior to
the rise of digital imaging.

Yet still, the company has
emerged as one of the
survivors in this fiercely
competitive industry.

In order to understand why
this happened, we must look
at the history of Casio.

The company has a fantastic
track record of introducing
electronics, destroying old
industries and reaching
mass markets.

It all started
back in the
1960s and 70s
when Casio
and Sharp lead
the electronic
calculator
revolution.

Within a few
years in the late
60s and early 70s,
these companies
destroyed many
industrial giants
by launching
cheap, portable
and good
electronic
calculators.

Just take a look at all the
mechanical giants that
collapsed in this shift:

Monroe…

Victor…

Burroughs…

Remington Rand…

Olivetti…

Facit…

With a competence base in
mechanics, these firms could not
keep up with Casio, Sharp, Texas
Instruments and the others.

After the shift to electronics,
the calculator industry
became a warzone of
competition. New, cheaper
and better models were
launched at a furious pace.

Many companies entered the
industry in the early 70s to dig
gold, but very few survived this
Klondike business.

Casio and
Sharp emerged
as two of the
surviving giants
after the war.

In the 70s and 80s, the
company thundered into
the watch industry and
massproduced
electronic watches.

Casio and its electronic relatives
Seiko and Citizen put 1000 of the
1500 Swiss watch manufacturers
out of business from 1970 to 1985.

The eternally
increasing
performance
and decreasing
prices implied
that Casio had
to integrate
many functions
into one gadget
in order to
remain
competitive.

Creating a calculator-wrist-
watch was one attempt to
deal with the continuing
decrease in prices.

After these two electronic
revolutions, Casio emerged
as a household name with a
very strong consumer brand.

The success was
essentially built
around an ability
to rapidly wire
new and better
electronics into
consumer-friendly
applications.

Both these
products were
based upon
integrated circuits
and an LCD
screen. The LCD
was perfect since
it was light,
cheap, required
very little energy
and could display
the simple figures
that were needed.

As time passed, these
markets became saturated
in the early 1990s and
Casio started to look for
new applications for its
core technologies.

These were the early
days of digital
photography…

In 1994, Apple launched
the QuickTake camera.

It looked like a pair of
binoculars, could store
32 photos and was the
first camera that could be
connected to a PC.

The price? 800 dollars.

Kodak launched the DC40
and DC50 in 1995-96.

What about putting an
LCD display into a
digital camera?

Remember, the LCD
was cheap, consumed
little energy and its
performance had been
improved significantly
since the calculator era.

By using their core
technologies, Casio came
up with the QV10 in 1995,
the first digital camera with
an LCD display.

It had an image quality
of 0,25 Megapixels and
required 4 AA batteries.

Not the greatest gadget
mankind has invented.

But the concept of
having a LCD screen and
this design turned out to
be very attractive.

Photos could now be
viewed instantly, bad ones
could be removed and new
ones taken directly.

Now the big Japanese
dragons like Canon,
Nikon and Olympus
invested a lot in
developing this concept.

The Japanese firms worked
jointly in an industry
association to solve critical
technical issues.

The QV 10 came to define
the core elements and
design of a digital compact
camera and now it was just
a matter of improving key
components such as the
image sensor, the batteris
and the LCD display.

However, Casio had
little past experience in
optics and therefore
collaborated with
Pentax in the beginning.

The Pentax Optio was co-developed with
Casio. Pentax provided the optics and Casio
made the electronic components. Thanks to
the modular structure of digital cameras, this
kind of collaborations worked well.

The corresponding Casio camera
was called Exilim.

Once the digital cameras had reached good
price and performance levels, sales exploded.
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Number of film and digital cameras
sold in the United States.

Having destroyed
mechanical companies
and fought similar wars
before, Casio went into the
fight and crammed more
and more pixels into their
consumer cameras.

Casio kept breaking
records, launching
thinner and cheaper
cameras with more
pixels every year…

Casio was the first
company to launch a 3
Mpixel compact camera
and the second one after
Toshiba with 4 Mpixels.

The company was also the
first one that broke the 10
Mpixel barrier for compacts.

But the Megapixel war was
over only a few years later
and the market for
compact cameras became
increasingly unattractive.

There were 3 main
reasons for this:

1. More advanced
’Prosumer cameras’ went
down in price and could
offer more features.

Canon and Nikon
had launched
SLR cameras
which offered
much better
optics and only
cost a few 100$
more than a
compact camera.

2. Mobile cameras started to
capture the low end users
of compact cameras.

3. Compact cameras
couldn’t really
incorporate more features
and no one needed more
pixels at this point.

Most people can’t tell the difference
between 6 and 10 megapixels.

All this implied that
Casio’s compact cameras
were stuck in the middle,
in a segment that was
maturing and increasingly
commoditized.

How do you break out of the commodity trap?

Well, Casio had done it before…

Remember?

Already in 2000,
they launched a
camera-wrist-
watch.

It was a fun gadget that could
take decent photos:

Casio also used
its Exilim brand
to launch a few
mobile cameras.

So far, the
company had
kept away from
the highly
competitive SLR
segment.

In recent years, the market for
digital camcorders had exploded.

What about
doing it over
again and
make an
integrated
camcorder-
camera?

In March 2008,
Casio
launched the
EX-F1 – a
camcorder-
camera with
the world’s
fastest burst
shooting
performance.

The camera can capture 60
images in one second, which is
about 20 times faster than any
SLR has done before.

This is amazing, because
the camera can take photos
of events that are not visible
to the human eye.

A few examples:

A drop of milk
hitting the water:

This camera
opens up a
new world of
photography
since
virtually
every
moment can
be captured.

Photographing nature and extreme events
becomes much easier than before.

Moreover, it has great
recording abilities, just take
a look at the following slow-
motion video:

For less than 1000 USD, you
can now freeze time, slow it
down and take photos of
events you have missed.

The camera has 6 Mpixels,
which is pretty good given
that takes 60 such photos in
one second.

But the EX-F1 has a couple of
weaknesses and sales have
been somewhat restricted.

Thus, one can partly regard it
as a prototype and an
indication of what is coming.

Instead of fighting the
megapixel or SLR wars with
Canon and Nikon, Casio re-
defined the camera industry
once again by focusing on
completely different attributes.

Will the EX-F1 become another landmark
camera from Casio, just like the QV10 forever
changed the camera industry?

We’ll see, personally I
believe that this camera will
have a profound impact on
the industry.

It’s interesting to see how
many big changes in the
camera industry have been
initiated by companies like
Casio which have a
background in consumer
electronics and not in
analogue photography.

It seems like
Casio had learnt
quite a few things
from the previous
digital wars they
had fought.

1. Being a
follower is
simply not an
option. In Pixel
and Calculator
wars, you
should either
focus 100% and
be a leader or
stay away.

Once the race
is about to
reach a dead
end, you need
to wire more
functions into
the same
gadget.

Sources
NY Times review of the EX-F1
Luminous Landscape
EX-F1 ad on youtube
Another video

Image attributions

Christian Sandström is a
PhD student at Chalmers
University of Technology in
Gothenburg, Sweden. He
writes and speaks about
disruptive innovation and
technological change.
www.christiansandstrom.org
christian.sandstrom@chalmers.se