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By NILADRI SEKHAR NATH

TMCnet Contributing Writer

 

In a bid to dominate the market, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., maker of Panasonic, announced that it will introduce its first digital single-lens reflex (SLR) camera later this year. The company said that it has been designing the technologies and devices for digital SLR cameras jointly with Japanese precision equipment maker Olympus Corp.

 

According to Reuters, Matsushita hasn’t decided the price range yet for the LUMIX DMC-L1. The company has already unveiled a prototype of the camera at the PMA 2006 International Convention and Trade Show in Orlando, Florida.

 

Olympus has already launched its E-330 digital SLR camera equipped with jointly developed mirror box unit and sensor.

 

Digital SLR cameras usually use interchangeable lenses, and although they are generally more expensive, they are in the end more profitable than simple point-and-shoot compact cameras.

 

The digital SLR camera market is on the rise. A report from Japan's Camera and Imaging Products Association finds that global shipment in the market is likely to rise by 48 percent, shipping 5.62 million units by 2008.

 

Seeking to combine resources and reduce costs, key players in the digital camera sector have now started to form digital SLR camera alliances. Konica Minolta Holdings Inc., Sony Corp.,  Pentax Corp. and a unit of South Korea's Samsung Electronics Company have all expressed interest in an alliance.

 

Konica has said that it will sell a portion of its SLR camera business to Sony to fully pull out from the business of selling cameras and photographic film.

 

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Niladri Sekhar Nath is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering telecommunications, service providers and networking.

 

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