This is a weird one to me. The analysis just doesn’t make sense for a remembrance post. But, Om is a Silicon Valley expert so, surely he knows more than I do.

Om Malik on DPReview being shut down

First of all, the camera industry is not healthy. Here are some sales numbers of digital cameras from CIPA:

Steady demand for multiple years is not a healthy market? Sure it’s less than the demand from a decade ago, but demand for cameras and lenses is not dropping off a cliff.

He then goes on to compare site visits for DPReview, a review site, and Petapixel, “another photography website that aggregates and publishes more “photography” related click-friendly content”. He determines that DPReview “wasn’t that good” with 1.9 million visits in January 2023 (down from 3 million in 2021) while Petapixel saw “its traffic surge” with 2.2 million visits in January 2023 (up from 1 million in 2021).

Om’s analysis:

  1. Camera Industry is not healthy because they’re not selling the same number of units they did a decade ago, even though they they have steady demand currently.
  2. Traffic review is all about the change in visits not the number of visits. Which in his research is approximately the same number for both sites he compared even though they are not the same type of site, just the same area of interest.