Action Camera sales in Europe are on track to grow €117 million in 2013, to reach €361 million and are forecast to continue the strong growth for the next five years according to a new report from Futuresource Consulting.
The CAGR is 11% for 2013 to 2017, a contrast to the decline of the traditional camcorder market is, where the value of shipments is forecast to drop by 23% from 2012 to 2013.
“The UK represents half of all European demand, which is partly due to the large early adopter market in the UK, as well as the popularity of social networking among UK consumers relative to other markets,” says Kate Russell, Research Analyst at Futuresource. “Action camera customers fall into one of two categories: consumers – accounting for around 85% of the market – and professionals who make up the rest. However, consumers can be further separated into two distinct categories – extreme sports and evidential.
“The GoPro range of cameras initially targeted surfers and quickly developed to support several extreme sports, such as snowboarding, cycling and the like. Also, with rising insurance premiums, evidential use is becoming more popular with video being used for capturing accidents, often for those commuting on bicycles or in cars.”
“GoPro dominates the action camera market in every major European market, accounting for around two out of every three purchases, while other specialists such as Ion, Contour and Drift represent the second tier, followed by the likes of Sony and JVC. Our research also indicates that a number of new vendors will enter this space in 2013 and 2014.”
Action camera sales are anticipated to grow over the next five years at least, filling a latent desire for sports enthusiasts to capture their experience, hands-free, accelerated by the boom in video-based social networking from Facebook, YouTube, GoPro.com and others. Longer term, developments within the smartphone market will cannibalise the action camera market, as handsets become increasingly rugged and waterproof.