A229 Pro Disappointment

[DT MI]

...It was interesting to see that they found that 1CH dashcams were the most popular (70% of the market) with 3CH dashcams being the fastest growing segment. Not too surprising.

Basic dashcams are also 70% of the market with smart dashcams being the fastest growing segment. I could see that.

These are the kind of metrics where the raw numbers are critical to understand what's really happening.

If product 'A' has year-over-year growth of 10% from 100,000 to 110,000 units, and product 'B' does 20% from 10,000 to 12,000, which is the 'growth' leader? Is it 'A' with 10,000 units or 'B' with 20%? Either answer is correct depending on how you want to look at it.

 

[Dashmellow]

Cool word. My vocabulary increased by one today.

I try to increase my vocabulary by one every day. For about three or so years now I've been subscribing to A.Word.A.Day (AKA Wordsmith) which I highly recommend to anyone looking to do the same.

- About Wordsmith -

 

[safedrivesolutions]

WHat people are not thinking about is the fact a lot of newer EV vehicles will have cameras built into them. By 2030 they want driverless vehicles on the road with no steering wheel in the cabin at all. It will be driving around on 5G or future tech and lots of cameras.

 

[DT MI]

WHat people are not thinking about is the fact a lot of newer EV vehicles will have cameras built into them...

True, but in the context of what is considered to be a 'dashcam' in today's vernacular I don't think that qualifies. JMO.

 

[safedrivesolutions]

True, but in the context of what is considered to be a 'dashcam' in today's vernacular I don't think that qualifies. JMO.

If you follow all the OEM stuff coming Thinkware, Blackvue and many other companies are making deals to sell add on dash cams to vehicle manufacturers. Also the cameras installed in EV are classified as dash cams. When it list JVC Kenwood and Panasonic as major manufacturers. Look around and tell me where you see these companies doing huge volume on a consumer electronics level?

They are not. They are doing it on an OEM level. Original Electronic Manufacturer. Which is direct to manufacturer in the vehicle build.

 

[Agie]

If you follow all the OEM stuff coming Thinkware, Blackvue and many other companies are making deals to sell add on dash cams to vehicle manufacturers. Also the cameras installed in EV are classified as dash cams. When it list JVC Kenwood and Panasonic as major manufacturers. Look around and tell me where you see these companies doing huge volume on a consumer electronics level?

They are not. They are doing it on an OEM level. Original Electronic Manufacturer. Which is direct to manufacturer in the vehicle build.

That's what I was saying earlier in this thread. With what we've heard already, these cameras built by these manufacturers on ODM/OEM level aren't very good. Makes sense because they have no competition as they have the big bucks contracts with the car manufacturers anyway. So no impetus to innovate or do better for the video quality on the camera.

Since the market is rather small compared to other consumer electronics, it should mean our jobs are safe here on DCT lol.

 

[ozguy]

WHat people are not thinking about is the fact a lot of newer EV vehicles will have cameras built into them. By 2030 they want driverless vehicles on the road with no steering wheel in the cabin at all. It will be driving around on 5G or future tech and lots of cameras.

what a great controlled dystopian future.

 

[vortex1961]

I don't know what the final cost would be, certainly more than we pay now, but I don't believe it would have to cost 2-3 thousand dollars. What we do need to really boost dash cam performance is a much larger sensor (Starvis 2?) with an appropriate lens, probably a C-mount pancake lens of some kind. A camera like that could conceivably be very similar in appearance to an A229 only with a larger lens module.

A twin lens dashcam, a wide and a telephoto lens with different decent sensors, just like Vortex radar once tried with a Nextbase tele lens

 

[Dashmellow]

A twin lens dashcam, a wide and a telephoto lens with different decent sensors, just like Vortex radar once tried with a Nextbase tele lens

A camera with a large sensor and better lens would be very different thing than a twin lens dash cam. A large sensor and pancake C-mount lens in any camera would provide far detail and better low light performance along with potentially greater depth of field than any currently available dash cam sensor/lens combination, regardless of resolution. Of course, if the camera had both a wide and telephoto lens plus larger sensors it would be pretty cool!

As for dual focal length capture, I am the guy who first introduced the concept of a telephoto dash cam to DashCamTalk over 6 years ago back in 2017 and have since improved on the performance. I have been using a dual wide/telephoto camera set-up ever since and so I know a thing or two about this subject.

Although I use two cameras to achieve my results, as I mentioned in my post in the third link down from back in 2018, it was by then possible to create a dual focal length camera with two sensors and two lenses as we now for the first time had chip-sets that would provide two channels. Rather than have a single camera with front and rear coverage we could have two forward facing lenses in one camera. I expressed my hope and belief that we will eventually see such a product from a worthy manufacturer and I know @viofo has dabbled with the concept based on a DIY dual lens project @TonyM demonstrated with the A139 Pro. (Tony and I had been talking privately about this idea for years and he is the one who finally made it happen.) Hopefully, they will be the company to bring this to fruition as I think they would be the one to really make this work, assuming there is a big enough market for it.


https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/mobius-varifocal-zoom-ir.30602/post-360133


https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/mobius-5mp-varifocal-zoom-6-22mm-ƒ-1-6.34263/post-405758


https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/mobius-5mp-varifocal-zoom-6-22mm-ƒ-1-6.34263/post-409609

 

[Nigel]

When it list JVC Kenwood and Panasonic as major manufacturers. Look around and tell me where you see these companies doing huge volume on a consumer electronics level?

Not in consumer electronics, but Panasonic are the reason those USA police chase videos are full of vibration and rolling shutter distortion caused by a dashcam on a stick:

And Kenwood are more into fleet sales: https://kenwoodshop.co.uk/pages/b2b

So there will be fairly large income from their sales, and probably reasonable sales volume too.

The big problem with reports like these is that they report on the available data, and in the dashcam sector there are a lot of companies that don't make their data available, so I don't consider it worth the $4000! No Viofo in the list of companies, probably means no Viofo sales in the figures, where would they get the data from?

 

[safedrivesolutions]

The big problem with reports like these is that they report on the available data, and in the dashcam sector there are a lot of companies that don't make their data available, so I don't consider it worth the $4000! No Viofo in the list of companies, probably means no Viofo sales in the figures, where would they get the data from?

Big box stores typically.

 

[Dashmellow]

The big problem with reports like these is that they report on the available data, and in the dashcam sector there are a lot of companies that don't make their data available, so I don't consider it worth the $4000!

So glad to hear Nigel that you alone know what the value of a report of this nature is really worth to the people and corporations that are in a position to actually pay $4000 for a report of this nature or why there is even a market for such reports.
Having not read this 281 page report how would you even begin to know how to evaluate its worth to the target audience? Please explain where your conceit that you know more than the marketing and research departments of multi-national corporations comes from or why you always present yourself as the ultimate authority on pretty much every subject for that matter.

It sounds like you haven't even bothered to read the rather extensive table of contents they provide from the report that comments on conditions, offers evaluations and makes projections years into the future for specific dash cam markets all over the world including the dash cam markets in places like Africa and Indonesia.

The big problem with reports like these is that they report on the available data

Well, yes Nigel. ALL reports are created with available data. What else should they use? How is that a problem? It's a question of what data they have to work with.

While we don't know exactly what is in that report, based on the available content and especially the Table of Contents it is highly likely that they sent researchers/investigators to locations all over the world to collect the "available data" and that is likely one of the reasons for the high cost of the report.

 

[Nigel]

it is highly likely that they sent researchers/investigators to locations all over the world to collect the "available data" and that is likely one of the reasons for the high cost of the report

I doubt that they ever left their office! If they did then they may have visited one or two trade shows.

And I don't consider $4000 to be a high price for a report that very few are going to buy.

 

[Dashmellow]

I doubt that they ever left their office! If they did then they may have visited one or two trade shows.

And I don't consider $4000 to be a high price for a report that very few are going to buy.

Well, of course you would doubt it Nigel, whether or not you even bothered to look at the range of information they are providing. As always, you are the self appointed ultimate authority on literally everything!

And you even claim to know how many reports this sizable global research and consulting company may sell. But exactly how could you know that?

So, according to you I guess they just visit one or two trade shows somewhere, write up a 281 page report with charts, tables and a very lengthy table of contents spanning markets all over the world and then slap a $4000 price tag on the report.

Unbelievable !!

"The Business Research Company excels in company, market and consumer research, conducted across many geographies. Our team consists of 200+ professionals working to create high quality market reports that can either be accessed through our research center, or can be customized as per the client’s needs. We have offices in the UK, the US and India along with a network of trained researchers in 20+ countries globally. Our network of global consultants offers years of experience at the top of their industries, having delivered projects successfully to major clients such as Amazon and Siemens among others.TBRC’s flagship product is its market forecasting platform: Global Market Model, the world’s most comprehensive database of integrated market information across geographies and sectors."

 

[Grunta]

That's what I was saying earlier in this thread. With what we've heard already, these cameras built by these manufacturers on ODM/OEM level aren't very good. Makes sense because they have no competition as they have the big bucks contracts with the car manufacturers anyway. So no impetus to innovate or do better for the video quality on the camera.

Since the market is rather small compared to other consumer electronics, it should mean our jobs are safe here on DCT lol.

It wouldn't surprise me if they come under side (360) and front, rear reversing cameras volume as virtually all new cars have at least rear cameras