How many webcams were sold in the US during 2020?

Assumptions: Webcams used by households not for security, does not include devices like Facebook portal, Google Nest hub etc. 

Also exlude devices sold with integrated webcams. 

Who typically buys webcams:

1. households for personal use (need to account for uplift due to covid)

2. schools and classrooms for educational purposes

3. video bloggers and gamers 

Avg webcam refresh cycle 2-3 years. Let's use 3. 

1. 

100M households in US. 

90% internet penetration = 90M HH

80% have PC/laptop at home = 70M devices 

Assume 3/4 of these are laptops and 1/4 are PCs 

50M laptop and 20M PCs

say on avg 10% of laptops buy an external webcam, and 50% of PCs buy external webcam 

5M/3yr = 1.5 webcams. Covid uplift would likely either shorten refresh cycle or more people would buy it so I'm going to double it to 3M webcams. 

50% of PCs buying a webcam every 3 years = 

(20M * 0.5) / 3 = 3M

Total is 3M+ 3M = 6M for household use. 

2. Students in classrooms buying webcams (I followed the same reasoning as below)

students needing this 10-18yrs, assuming normal distribution of age with lifespan of 80yrs = 8/80 * 330M = 33M students. 

one webcam for every 30 students = 1M

refresh cycle of 3 years = 300K

3. Gamers, video bloggers. 

Gamers = likely male heavy so lets say out of 150M male population 5% are avid gamers = 8M gamers 

Refresh cycle for gamers would be less so say 2 years 

4M gaming webcams 

Video bloggers - 1 video blogger for every 500K (assume each blogger has about 500K viewers/subscribers) so 

1/500K * 300M = 600 bloggers (seems low)

avg refresh would be lower of 2 years = 300 webcams. 

Total of 1 + 2 + 3

6M + 300K + 300 = 6,300,300 webcams sold. 

Assumption: We are talking about webcams for video calls (not for security\tracking purposes)

The Equation: Webcams sold for households + webcams sold for schools + webcams sold for workplaces

Households

• Population 330M

• Average household 3

• 100M households

• Assumptions

  • if a house has a webcam, it will only have a single cam

  • most of the new laptops bought include a webcam

  • 90% of the US population have internet access -> 90M households with internet

  • 95%+ of the webcams that are bought, bought for stationary computers

  • (a big assumption) 30% of the households have a stationary computer -> 33M

  • (another big assumption) out of those, 25% has webcam -> 8M

  • People buy a webcam on average every 3 years -> during 2020, 2.6M webcams were bought by households

Schools

• Assumptions:

  • Schools own a neglected amount of webcams (why should a student have a webcam?)

  • For things that I currently can’t think of, I would like to assume that for students at the age of 10-18, schools own a webcam for every 30 students.

  • How many students we have at the age 10-18 => [8/80] X [330M] = 33M students

  • A web cam for every 30 students -> 1M webcams

  • If buying a webcam every 3 year -> during 2020 -> 350K cams were bought by schools.

Work \ Professional 

• Independent professional gamers + professional video content creator =>
  0.1% of population => 300k -> buy cam every 3 years (they buy more expensive ones) -> during 2020 -> 100k cams were bought by independent professionals

• Workplaces -> most of the workplaces that need cams are using laptops. 

  • How many people may need cams in their workplace?

    • I would assume 10% of the people at the age of 25-55 =>10% X [⅜] X 330M = ~12M

    • I assume that 60% of them user laptops

      • 60% X [How many people with laptops would like to have a standalone cam = 10% ] => 720k 

    • 40% x 12M = 4.8M

    • In total 5.5M, dividing in 3 year => 1.8M cams

Summarizing = 1.8M + 350k + 2.6M = 4.75M computer cams were bought during 2020 in US

I didn’t take into account: Covid19 -> more people moving to work from home and to study from home, and usually, they try to make the work station comfortable.
I assume that during Covid19, there was an increase in purchases of webcams by households while there was a decrease in purchases for workplaces.