Camera World

When digital cameras hit the mass market in 1997, consumers couldn't get enough of them. Within nine years, nearly 300 million digital cameras were sold, and half of all households in the U.S. and Japan owned one, as did 41% of all European households, making digital photography one of the fastest-adopted technologies of all time. Such dramatic change comes at a price: the icons of photography as we knew it tumbled. Polaroid went bust in 2001. Kodak stopped making film cameras in 2004.

Now, however, it's the sellers of digital cameras themselves who have to worry about possible extinction. With the summer photo-snapping season in full swing, market-research firm IDC is predicting that consumers in Japan and Western Europe will buy fewer digital cameras this year than they did last year (in fact, the numbers already declined in Japan in 2005). Around the world,

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