How Casio is selling $900 selfie cameras in China

The compact camera market is essentially dead, as smartphones have supplanted

traditional point-and-shoots for most people’s photography needs. Smartphones have also pioneered entirely new forms of photography, like selfies. None of this is news to anyone. What might be news to you, however, is that there are still ways to sell compact cameras in 2017, if you can find the right product and the right market. You can sell them for quite a lot of money, in fact. And that’s what Casio has been doing with its TR series of cameras over the past few years in Asia. The TR series is aggressively focused on one thing: perfect selfies. The current flagship model, the TR-80, looks like a small smartphone with a giant bejeweled lens up top; its angular metallic frame doubles as a kickstand and triples as a rotating handle for group shots. The dual flashes and software give users extensive control over lighting, skin tone, and makeup. Casio says its users commonly refer to the TR cameras as the “selfie God device,” and although the company won’t provide detailed sales data, the cameras are popular enough in Asia to command a price of around $900 for relatively unremarkable hardware.                                                                https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/12/16463626/casio-tr-series-selfie-cameras-china-asia