An Industry Washes Out?

After recording the production in Japan of a stunning 1580 film cameras in January of this year, the Camera and Imaging Products Association (Kamera Eizō Kiki Kōgyōkai) seems to have ceased counting the number of film cameras produced by its members.

I have drawn up a graph of the last year and a quarter of monthly production data. According to CIPA figures, manufacturers in Japan produced 92,716 film cameras in July 2007 and 79,210 as recently as October.

Click on image for full size

From all appearances, the industry has just evaporated.

I believe I now can understand what my great-grandparents must have felt when they read in the newspaper one day that the last cart owner in the city had put his old mule out to pasture.

Original report from Wired's Gadget Lab.

Later - It seems Kitanaka-san checked in with her getto first.