HTC (2498:TT) needs a boost, so it makes sense that the company feels inclined to make a bold move. But the move it made on Wednesday—to jump into the plummeting casual camera market—is a strange one.
One thing you can say about this camera, called the RE, is that it looks like nothing you’ve ever seen before. It’s shaped like a periscope and has only two buttons: the shutter on the back (tap for photos; hold for video) and a button on the front that you press for slow-motion video. There’s no viewfinder, which is the point. HTC thinks that people are sick of looking at their phones every time they want to take a picture, and will prefer to hold this strange-looking object safely away from their faces during events they want to document. The 146-degree wide-angle lens is fairly forgiving, easing fears that the subject of the photo won’t actually be in frame.
The camera takes some inspiration from GoPro (GPRO), which has flourished in recent years because its cameras are great for strapping to your head as you jump off a cliff. But it’s not quite right to call the RE a competitor to those cameras, says Jason Mackenzie, president at HTC America. “This is more about everyday use, about the young parent capturing a moment. It’s a pain in the butt to live those events through a viewfinder on your phone,” he says.
For this to catch on, it will need to buck the dominant trend in casual photography—no one buys stand-alone cameras anymore unless they’re looking at the high-end stuff. Sales of cameras with built-in lenses have dropped more than 70 percent since 2012, according to the Camera and Imaging Products Association.
GoPro’s success has come largely from creating a device uniquely good at something smartphones aren’t good at. HTC is betting that people will spend $200 on a device just because they find using a smartphone as a camera unpleasant, despite all signs pointing toward people pretty much being in love with the smartphone as a camera.
Also dubious is HTC’s proposition that success in the camera market will translate into success in smartphones. The company has less than 2 percent of the global smartphone market, down from 2.8 percent a year ago. Mackenzie says that could change, because people who like the RE will also want HTC’s other devices. This is the basic strategy behind all kinds of devices made by smartphone companies, like Apple’s smartwatches and Samsung’s virtual reality headset. The trick is to make the phone a necessary part of the accessory’s experience. But if HTC wants to sell cameras, it can’t rely on the few people who own HTC phones, so it hasn’t done anything to the RE that will make it work better with an HTC phone than with a Galaxy. The RE comes with an accompanying smartphone app that works on any Android or iOS device, so if the camera inspires enthusiasts, they won’t have to give up their iPhones.
