Dixons, the UK's largest electronic goods retailer, yesterday consigned film-based cameras to the scrap heap in favour of digital cameras.

Bryan Magrath, marketing director at Dixons, describes the decision as an "emotional departure" from the electrical retailer's past, but insists that it is an inevitable step as the photography market migrates from film to memory cards.

"Time and technology move on," said Mr Magrath. "Digital cameras are now the rule, rather than the exception. We have decided that the time is now right to take 35mm cameras out of the frame." Dixons will keep just a handful of specialist cameras in its big stores and its airport outlets - for now at least.

It is the second time in less than a year that Dixons has scrapped a seminal gadget - last December it pulled the plug on video recorders in favour of DVD players. Driving its latest decision is the boom in digital photography over the past few years. Jessops, another UK retailer, says since 2001, sales of digital cameras have leapt from 27 per cent to 97 per cent of sales. Euromonitor International, a consumer market research firm, says UK retail sales of digital cameras rose to £690m (€997.5 million) in 2003.

Photo Market Association International, a worldwide trade association of photo retailers and processors, says that the US digital camera market will peak in 2006, and decline in 2007. While many UK retailers admit that the film camera market is in decline, only Dixons has decided to pull out of the market completely.

Anthony Ward, managing director of Bonusprint, points out that the total market for printing films is dropping by 30 per cent a year, while digital processing is growing by just 10 per cent as people either choose to develop less prints or store them in electronic formats on computers.