India: HD Cams Not Yet Hot for Affluent Young

India has seen some extremely good economic times in the past decade, but its extremely large and growing talent pool of young, educated and increasingly well paid, white-collar consumers with discretionary income have not yet gravitated to HD cameras as much as in the West and Pacific Rim.

Matsushita (Panasonic), Sony and Canon are finding their increasingly improved, lighter and smaller (albeit relatively expensive) HD cams and digital still cameras are not proving to be very popular consumer items in India, at least not yet, according to the Economic Times of India.

As little as 300,000 camcorder units of all formats may be on the market this summer in the world’s second-most populous nation (1.1 billion)--and of that number, perhaps only 1 percent is thought to be HD quality. Still, according to a Sony India exec, affluent young adults (age 25-35) remain the key target for HD products of all kinds.