Image courtesy: Personal View.
Olympus CEO released an interview at Diamond (a Japanese Magazine). In short he says that Olympus didn’t expect the compact camera fixed lens market to drop that dramatically. But the good news for them is that the new Olympus E-m1 is selling very well and also their PEN camera sales are good. The most important thing Olympus built up a good reputation on the market.
Image courtesy: Personal View.
Cameras.Reviewed and Mainichi analyzed the latest CIP data and while it’s true that sales went down this year there is also some surprising positive aspects to report. Personal View analyzed the data and discovered that actually compact camera sales are now steady (no more dropping) while DSLR and Mirrorless system camera sales increased recently! The graph on very top shows you how DSLR and Mirrorless camera shipments increased (CIPA data from Japanese companies). And when you look at the second graph you wills ee that compact camera market is now steady.
In short: On year to year to basis it is true that this year was worse than 2012. But lately things have gone a bit better. So, are we sure that the dramatic reports and forecast are not…too exaggerated?
122 Responses
Thought micro four thirds would much stronger in the 2nd half of the year.I think the E-M1 is much better than Oly’s wildest expectations.The O-MD user group on flickr has grown by nearly 30% since the E-M1 launch and its quite easy to see via exif data etc where the new users are coming from.
If you could separate micro four thirds from its mirrorless competitors the upward trends would be even stronger.
If Panasonic up their marketing game and Olympus do some wise moves next year then 2014 could be the tipping point outside of East Asia….
Neither Olympus, Panasonic nor Sony are making a profit in their camera divisions. I don’t believe Olympus nor Panasonic has since day one, with m4/3. I wouldn’t bet on them to be able to continue this way much longer.
@doug Nash
Pretty sure Oly and Panny’s imaging profits were dragged down by point and shoots and not their mirrorless offerings
Olympus Pen series isn’t seling, hasn’t been… Need me to find you the Link again?
Panasonic and Sony have been losing billions on their televisions as well. This doesn’t mean they will abandon their television divisions anytime soon. Let’s hope they don’t walk away from mirror less cameras.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/10/business/japan-sony-record-loss/index.html
The point I was making was WDYW was blaming lack of sales on point and shoots, when it wasn’t. It was Mirrorless offerings such as the Pen cameras. I’m not saying that ANYONE will abandon M43. I’m just saying it’s not doing as good as fanboys think they’re doing.
And this is coming from someone that owns/owned over 4 M43 cameras, including a L-1.
From Diamond magazine:
Quality and rate of turn of inventory vastly improved.The E-M1 is helping sales of the E-M5.
Sales of lenses are fast increasing, much better price stability which helps their end profits.
Would like to see more of these kind of interviews from Panasonic imaging and also broadcast…
I think all mirrorless will do much better in the second half of the year.
Much of the sales drop was tied in to new model release cycles.
Fuji XE-2, Sony A7, Panasonic GM1 and GX7 and Oly E-M1 will all boost sales.
The new Pentax Q will appeal in Japan and certain Asian countries and even the Samsung NX300 and Android thingy will appeal to a certain segment of the market.
I do though think the future for all high end cameras is a slow decline towards pre-digital market percentage levels as the non enthusiast reverts to phones and simpler cameras now.
The only difference is that the enthusiast market is much larger now as the middle classes in countries like China, India and Brazil are so much larger.
So the percentage of the market using more advanced cameras will be the same as the film days but the number of people in that segment will be larger.
Samsung isn’t making much headway and don’t have the photo and video expertise.The smartphone market will become saturated within the next 2 years (my smartphone has just fallen out of contract and Android kitkat hasn’t given me any reason to upgrade).
I think the percentages will be higher than the film days for 3 main reasons one is video, two is photography is far more accessible and the purchasing power of women is far higher.
Micro four thirds needs to attract average folks who bought DSLRs and never got real value out of them so they can fall in love with photography…
If economic conditions improve for ordinary people in the USA and the Eurozone this too will help Micro Four Thirds….
In the US, Samsung has the number three market share in terms of mirrorless cameras actually bought (after Sony and Nikon), with Olympus fourth. Those numbers are based on cash register receipts, not “hey I shipped a camera from the factory” (CIPA) numbers.
The USA is 16% of the current world market and less likely to be where mirrorless profits are made.Not sure what the American Samsung NX users are doing with their cameras as they are not showing up on Flickr, 500px, dpreview etc.In the UK they’ve tried giving away free tablets with a purchase of a NX…sounds desperate.
This is a key observation. It differs if you actually use a camera or just own it. If m43 camera images populate flickr, it signals that serious amateurs (prosumers if you like the word) are keen on it. And these serious amateurs are the real opinion makers for the general public. Eg. a photo enthusiast I know and trust. I ask their advice the next time I buy a camera, maybe now maybe in 2 years. And this is a sure sign that small format mirrorless will eventually win, if the manufacturers keep rolling out better and better cameras – just like Panasonic and Olympus do. It is simply a matter of time. I do not see ANY advantage of having a mirror in a camera but a lot of drawbacks. Same with intermediary formats such as APS. Too big for most jobs, but there is an even better-bigger alternative for the few profis who need it.
I don’t have access to monthly retail sales data outside the US, but I have seen some spot reports from time to time. Samsung appears to be doing decently in some Asian markets, too. All I’m saying is don’t discount them.
As for using Flickr as an indicator, you’re making a classic statistics mistake: you can’t predict to population from a single data set like that, and Flickr tends to be a high-end predictor to start with.
@thom hogan
I’m basing my opinion on flickr stats and behaviour etc which offers useful sample cross section of what’s happening and has happened in the real world. If Samsung is shoving nx cameras onto consumers that won’t get real value out of them then that is very shortsighted and expensive way of doing business in today’s world…
You’re basing SALES based off of Flickr and social Stats? My gosh, how Slow are you??
And you have a good profile of the average Flickr user? Age, income, activity, hobbies, etc.? I doubt it.
I have to be careful when I do surveys of my site readers because I know that they skew from the overall population. They’re older, have more disposable income, are active in photography, have multiple cameras, more lenses than average, and so on. Thus, I can’t predict actual overall market from them.
Essentially, you have a sample bias, but you don’t know what it is. Please stop trying to say anything other than “Flickr users tend to…” Flickr is not photography. Moreover, it has regional biases, amongst other problems.
@Dearest Thom Hogan
“please stop”……….
ignore the info and trends that can be pulled from Flickr at your DSLR’s peril.
btw
Flickr has a far wider demographic than your fan boys.
I don’t understand how the two graphs go together. The first graph shows a large increase during Oct-Nov 2012, while the second grtaph shows nothing of the sort.
The first graph will probably be shipments which usually increases in the Autumn/Fall as retailers prepare for the holiday season.
Last year it would probably have taken until the Spring for those shipments to be used up hence the very low shipments in the first half of this year.
graph 1 looks to show mirrorless has 20-25% share?
graph 2 looks to show DSLRs are down 60% since 2011?
*not sure why graph continue to zero for mirrorless Nov and Dec 2013 (a bit misleading as doesn’t do the same for DSLRs)*
#ruleof4thirds
*not sure why graph continue to zero for mirrorless Nov and Dec 2013 (a bit misleading as doesn’t do the same for DSLRs)*
-> DSLRs are sold automaticaly 🙂 …something like bread …you have to eat it every day 🙂
Current number is mirrorless is 18%, DSLR is 82%.
You can’t compare 2011, because it includes mirrorless and DSLR together.
The first graph is Mirrorless vs DSLR.
The second graph is all system cameras vs compacts.
Es wrote: “I don’t understand how the two graphs go together. The first graph shows a large increase during Oct-Nov 2012, while the second grtaph shows nothing of the sort”
O yes, because we are at runors website, we are not supposed to possess all the information. So we just have to guess the footnotes of the graphs. One thing I know for sure, these are definitely not the monthly variations in Japan.
The problem with CIPA numbers is that they don’t actually indicate sales of cameras, they only indicate production (manufacturing) and shipping (distribution) of cameras. What happened last year is that the Japanese manufacturers believed their own propaganda, and they thought Christmas 2012 was going to be the time when mirrorless gobbled up DSLR sales. Didn’t happen. Instead, we ended with a ton of mirrorless cameras sitting on shelves waiting for buyers and eventually huge discounting to unload them, all of which came back as large SG&A costs on everyone’s bottom line.
Better numbers to watch are the actual retail sales numbers (compiled from cash register receipts). They’re down for everything year to year, though mirrorless is down less than DSLRs which is down less than compacts. The notion that compacts are “flat” and not continuing to drop isn’t held up by the retail numbers through October in the two markets I get those numbers for.
Which brings us to the other problem with the CIPA numbers: manufacturers have to book revenue. They do so when they “ship” a product to subsidiaries. If you need to keep your sales numbers up, you ship and then tolerate the discounting that will occur later to actually sell the product. To a large degree, the Japanese companies are manipulating their numbers in ways that smooth their actual sales numbers. When you look at the CIPA and retail sales numbers together, you can clearly see the inventory stuffing that went on. It’s still going on to a smaller degree.
If the manufacturers are still stuffing the retail channels, do you suggest that we wait until after Christmas for some decent sales prices?
Yes, I remember your article about way too many Nikon SKUs and need to slim down their offering down to one model per camera class.
Good question. The answer is they’re working off of the same CIPA data that we were for our post (linked above). There simply isn’t data for November and December of this year yet, which is why their graph goes to zero for those months. They probably should’ve left those data points off because it’s quite confusing as-is. You can check out CIPA’s date for yourself here: cipa.jp/stats/dc_e.html
The data is really quite grim. Yes you can see there is some improvement in the last few months, but that’s just the normal seasonality of camera shipments. Shipments tend to spike in March/April (CES/CP+ models coming to market) and then at the end of the year ahead of the holiday season, before dropping off in December. You can’t really draw meaningful conclusions from month-to-month because there are other seasonal variables. The year-over-year data is what’s important and it’s quite bad.
For ILCs, the big issue is that consumers in Europe/America simply aren’t connecting with mirrorless products for some reason. The cameras themselves are great, reviewers are overwhelmingly positive about them, but 90% of the ILC market there is still made up of traditional DSLRs. For Japanese companies that depends on exporting (strong Euro/Dollar, weak Yen), that’s a massive issue.
Hope that clears it up!
T.J. Donegan
EIC, Reviewed.com Cameras
@T.J. Donegan
Mirrorless has near 30% market share in the United Kingdom and is also doing well in some European countries.
Source?
@thom hogan
I’m away from home till Saturday but previous graphs posted on 43rumors have shown mirrorless approaching 30% in the UK as well as doing good in East Asia( I do have the graphs on my computer at home too)
At the moment, the only source of by country data I know of is unverified data from individual camera makers (the m4/3 companies and Sony have at various times shown such charts). But that doesn’t actually speak to overall volume in those countries. So if you have a source for country-specific numbers, I’d like to know what it is.
it was posted here, on mu-43.com and dpreview around Sept-Oct 2011, it showed the UK having much higher market share than the rest of Europe (the UK in many respects are often early adopters).
Definitively love to see the source too. 🙂
how much OM-D EM1 they sell and which continent ?
Maybe try putting together a comprehensible sentence, then someone will answer it.
Come on we are not all English professors, for some people English is our second language. But Tomas don’t be a putz you’re not going to get answers to that question, it’s hard enough to find any kind of sales figures at all.
thanks :-)…it was retorical Q 🙂
but to be honest ..I am curious …as I see on the streets only C & N
I also had no problem in understanding tomas (even before correcting (??) to “continent”). My English is not correct always, neither is yours, I guess (“putting” should be “to put”). An added difficulty is if we use “smartphones” and tablets with poor keyboards and auto completion/correction…
mhh ….how many EM1`s is sold till now ?
you can forget continent …lets think global
A million including Hawaii 😉
As the top chart ends in October, there can’t be many E-M1 included as there, atleast in Europe, were hardly any available at that time. It will be much more interesting to see charts for November and December. These are the last months top sellers from the store where I buy my cameras in Sweden.
1. Canon EOS 70D body
2. Canon EOS 6D body
3. Nikon D7100 body
4. Canon EOS 5D Mark III body
5. Pentax K-3 body
6. Olympus E-M1 OM-D body
7. Nikon D7000 body
8. Fujifilm X-Pro1 body + Fujinon 2 lens kit
9. Olympus E-M1 OM-D body + M4/3 12-40/2.8
10. Canon EOS 7D body
The bottom chart is a bl00dy mess what is it supposed to show. It has 6 lines with dots and 3 colours and 3 solid colours (also note the cessation of one year does not correlate to the commencement of the next year). What is what? What does SYS mean? What does COM mean? Look and think before you answer that.
Sys – system camera, Com – compact camera. Each line represents a colour coded year. Really, please try a little harder.
Perhaps Jim is from a non English speaking country too, so lay off smarty pants
I said think before you answered. The chart cannot represent that. Have another look. Then explain which SYS is which.
About cessation of the year, I don’t see the trick: you ma have variations from december 2011 to january 2012..
Now about the “what is what”, it’s another story since SYS (areas) shouldn’t be lower than COM (lines on top) if SYS means “all cameras” (but who knows what that really means?).
So JimD is probably a bit harsh in his comments, but he’s not alone being puzzled by this chart…
I agree with Jim, “think” people! How can SYS be system it’s big letters, if it was sys it would be short for system, as in anchornims.
We obviously agree about what SYS doesn’t mean. If you can help poor breaned ppl like me who can’t “think” and tell me what it means, you’re very welcome 🙂
Oh, and as someone else stated, remember we’re not all native english speaker here.
I can say that these are clasic have a go bad design! key is not concise enough, styling is too big and clumbsy and data is badly represented with shaded area – should just use 2 line types with solid and dotty! data points are ok, but should be smaller along with line weight (represented with cross to show degree of error/clarifacation of centre). text/font is poor… more time has been spent deciding the colour and a nice fancy gradient! – get the basics right and the rest will work out well!
I think sys is the EM-1 OMD not sure about com?
+1 for E-M1 I think so too
So why is there a SYS line for 2011 and 2012?
No. “SYS” refers to interchangeable lens cameras (DSLR and mirrorless combined). “COM” refers to compact cameras (built-in lens in CIPA terms). None of the graphs show anything about the E-M1 directly.
The problem here is the conclusions being drawn from the graphs. You’ll note that compact camera sales traditionally peak in October and go down afterwards. This is the Christmas channel stuffing, and reorders don’t happen until the Christmas sales numbers are known. The contention that compact sales are no longer going down is actually incorrect: they’re down every month when you compare year-to-year. What the writer of “compact camera sales are now steady” actually means is that the Japanese companies shipped about the same number of compact cameras in each of the previous few months. To some degree, the shipped numbers for 2013 look “flat,” but I suspect that this is just the current minimal production numbers necessary to keep the plants open. In terms of retail sales here in the US, we’re still seeing actual sales numbers about two-thirds that of last year each month. The small group of dealers I talk to regularly all report HIGHER drops in compact sales. The one thing that is positive for compacts is that the average selling price is going up.
Thom you’re spot on here. The year over year sales are the important thing to look at. They’ve shipped around 38 million fixed-lens cameras this year from January through October. In 2010 they had shipped 90 million fixed-lens cameras by the end of October. The point-and-shoot industry is dying.
Interchangeable lens is a different story, but it’s still down 10-15% from last year, and with all the huge sales on year-old mirrorless cameras this season, I doubt you’ll see huge shipments in November. The only market where cameras have grown at all this year is in Japan, where interchangeable lens sales are up by about 25% compared to 2012. Fixed lens, DSLR, and mirrorless are down in the rest of Asia, Americas, and Europe, and in most places by double digits compared to 2012. It’s been a very rough year. Just have to hope 2014 is better.
Then why are they both represented by the same symbols. Or had you not noticed. The top is a coloured line with dots. The bottom is the same + some solid shading. The visuals do NOT match the key.
Please explain!
Is there an inference here that is not mentioned? Is it a do it yourself chart by some one who has never made a chart before. If one know the answer then the inference may be made, but not unless. You tout yourself as a manger and marketing guy. Would you accept the lower chart as informative in your business. If you would. Then you should go home and cry for your lost confused customers. The chart, as being informative, is utter rubbish. Making lots of words around it does not change the facts, it just belittles the explainer when trying to explain the unexplainable with what on the surface looks like it could be common sense.
SYS is all system cameras, DLSR and mirrorless. The end and beginning of years don’t match because there’s no “empty space” with a line between december and january. You can also see that both mirrorless and DLSR dip in november, and that is reflected in the 2nd graph.
the graph is OK it covers a 3 year period the only other way to do is to have either a very long or squashed graph.
They could make it higher like taller n not sqash’d
If one were to take all the Rebels and D3x00s out of the equation (= the tourist cams), we’d get a better picture of what is going on in the market.
“The tourist” is a very strange phenomenon (ranging from clothing choice to camera choice), and those people will continue to buy Rebels and D3x00s for a long time to come. Old habits die hard, and tourists just seem to copy other tourists without any critical though in their brains.
I understand that professionals might be hesitant to drop their 1DX/D4 just yet.
However I get the feeling that a large number of enthousiasts are moving away from the D7000 / 7D realm and into the world of mirrorless. Canikon’s forced push towards D600 / 6D has backfired (I think), and people are moving towards Olympus, Fuji and Sony.
The majority of the “tourist” trade do not buy cameras. They are sold the camera of the day. Irrespective of their ideas when then the enter the store, they mostly leave with the “camera of the day” The camera of the day is easy to recognise there is a palette of them by the door. And the bigger the box the better.
Oh the tourists… the DSLR is like MySpace to a lot of people. What Nikon and Canon don’t get is that once some people jump ship… everyone will jump ship (average consumers I mean. people who know cameras will always buy according to their individual needs). And I see more and more mirrorless cameras as I go out.
In a declining market, the DSLR will get hit harder than mirrorless and that’s just because they’re at the top. The shift will be dramatic.
So you are saying if you take away all the people who are buying the 90% of interchangeable lens cameras in the US that are DSLRs, then fewer DSLRs were sold.
Sure, I guess that’s true.
all camera sales are bound to decline, because the tech has finally reached a maturity level that only shows small incremental improvements year to year.
their product cycles and strategies need to start reflecting that. Fuji got the longevity part right with firmware updates for products over 2 years old. That makes for happy and loyal customers.
From now on it’s going to be a long-term game, and whoever plays it right will shift the market in their favor.
ease of use and connectivity are big factors which will drive the market forward…
That is true in mature economies.
The ever growing wealth in the developing nations will continue to add to the potential customers.
Whether that will offset the decline in sales in the first world economies is the great unknown.
e-m1 continues to be in stock at B&H. Therefore, the need to pump this overpriced camera still some more….
No big changes in 2013 so far. Mirrorless holds 1/3 of ILC market. No signs of either DSLRs or mirrorless going away anytime soon. I think Panasonic and Olympus just need to be persistent, improve their marketing and will eventually win over the customers.
And what JimD said they need to sell to tourists, especially the SYS camera
Let’s be accurate.
DSLRs 17.317m 82%
mirrorless 3.799m 18%
18% is a long way from 1/3 ;~).
In fact its just past the halfway mark 😉
But market share is merely one metric, and one that says a lot about who is doing good for the popularity contest, but nothing at all about who is doing well for sustainability.
Remember, winning in a market is getting customers, making a profit and being sustainable. Or put differently, market share is pretty easy to get when giving away your products (not saying Canon/Nikon and all are doing that, merely pointing out the value of the metric as such)
> But market share is merely one metric,
Absolutely. However, as Ries and Trout pointed out, market share is a predictor of profitability.
> getting customers, making a profit and being sustainable.
This year, Olympus says it will add 660,000 customers. They’ve also said that they won’t be profitable until they can get 1,000,000 customers a year. (Though I should point out that Olympus has gone back on many things they’ve said in the past. ;~) Slowly but surely virtually every analyst following the Japanese consumer electronics companies has come round to the same conclusion: Olympus hasn’t yet shown that they can sustain their camera efforts. Now a lot of that is mixed in with them just getting hammered in compacts. But at this point I’ve not seen anything that indicates that they can attain and retain a profit on mirrorless cameras only, either. Not to say that they won’t get there or can’t get there, only that the evidence so far is not particularly positive. Personally, I want them to get there. I like the OM-Ds a lot, and use them regularly. I don’t want to see them get squashed by Canikon like the original OM’s were. All of us who follow these things closely are going to be looking very very closely at the next two financial releases from Olympus. They really need to show that they can beat forecasts.
> Or put differently, market share is pretty easy to get when giving away your products (not saying Canon/Nikon and all are doing that, merely pointing out the value of the metric as such)
Canon and Nikon are both still profitable, while none of the other camera makers are. This gives them pricing power in the market, and indeed, that’s exactly what’s happening: US$500-800 DSLRs are vastly outselling mirrorless cameras. When the E-M1 costs more than a D7100, it’s just a harder sell. Not that it can’t be done, but there are a lot of hurdles to climb. Moreover, there’s absolutely nothing stopping Canon and Nikon from simply joining the party in mirrorless with substantive offerings. From Nikon’s standpoint, for example, a D3200 made mirrorless will cost them LESS to produce, so they’d probably retain pricing advantage. Ditto Canon.
Market share does not necessarily equal profitably.
” They’ve also said that they won’t be profitable until they can get 1,000,000 customers a year.” This wasn’t actually attributed to anyone at Olympus.
I don’t think any camera has made a profit in compact camera sales in the last 3 years, not even canikon.
“Canon and Nikon are both still profitable, while none of the other camera makers are. This gives them pricing power in the market, and indeed, that’s exactly what’s happening: US$500-800 DSLRs “FALSE SHORT TERM ECONOMY THAT WILL COME BACK TO BITE THEM.
“When the E-M1 costs more than a D7100, it’s just a harder sell. Not that it can’t be done, but there are a lot of hurdles to climb.” Only seems to be a big problem in a few markets, most consumers are now more intelligent.
“Moreover, there’s absolutely nothing stopping Canon and Nikon from simply joining the party in mirrorless with substantive offerings.” THEY TRIED, THEY FAILED.
“From Nikon’s standpoint, for example, a D3200 made mirrorless will cost them LESS to produce, so they’d probably retain pricing advantage. Ditto Canon.”Olympus has the margin.
Thom, sorry but market share is only an indicator for sustainable profitability in specific cases. The reason I already pointed out.
As has been pointed out by many analists, Nikon has nothing to fall back on, so cannot afford much, unlike canon, olympus, sony and to quite some extent pentax. That may well turn out to be a better indication of long term sustainability.
I think the reason mirrorless camera sales in the U.S. are slow, is due to the demise of dedicated camera stores. Unless you are savy enough to know what you want and order it online (the minority of folks), your only recourse is to go to Walmart or Best Buy. All they display are point-and-shoots and entry level dSLR’s. You’ll never see a PEN or G-series m4/3 camera, much less a GX7 or EM-1.
@ Willy
I agree that you won’t see m4/3 cameras at Best Buy or Walmart, but you will see Sony NEX cameras and even the Samsung NX cameras. Even here in NYC, none of the Best Buys I’ve been too had m4/3 cameras.
I don’t understand why Olympus and Panasonic don’t push more m4/3 cameras, when you see a lot of their lower point and shoot cameras are displayed.
In a big box store, price is important and the customer is “steerable.” When an E-M1 sits for US$1400 next to a D7100 for US$1100, the story has to be that you’re getting something really valuable for that US$300 difference, and not giving up something valuable, either. A smart sales person can steer this sale to the D7100 almost every time and make it look like he’s saving the person US$300. Give the salesman a spiff (incentive) and he’ll do that every time ;~). Oh, and that shelf space? The manufacturer is paying for it in some way, so ones who pay more get better space. Companies like Sony that make lots of products that should be in the store can leverage that, too. Note the Samsung store inside many Best Buys, now.
This is one reason why I pick on marketing messages so much. Without compelling marketing messages the price and feature check list is going to be the primary factors that influence the sale. Unfortunately when you’re losing money on cameras and have huge SG&A expenses already, you tend to cut back on marketing, so you get into a downward spiral.
The world doesn’t revolve around USA’s big box stores which in all likelihood produce the least amount of profit.
Least amount of profit??
Best Buy, Target, even Wallmart sell DSLR’s daily. Buyers for these stores don’t see the reason to buy into M43, because Panasonic and Olympus refuse to Market them in the states.
I see and hear canon commercials on ESPN and sports radio all of the time. B&H and Adorama have adds on sports radio and tv as well.
@mr all caps
Do I have to tell you what is going on in your own country? Walmart pays its shop workers some of the most disgustingly low wages anywhere in the Developed World, a number of it’s executives are being investigated in several countries for bribery, it’s severely damaged mom and pop stores and USA manufacturing as well as the health of USA citizens.Do you really think big box USA retailers make a fair profit also consider how rich the Walton family et al are….
Also, Thom, Joe and Buffy Suburban see the big black DSLR as something “serious” or “professional’ to which they aspire when they want to get more involved with photography. After all, the wedding or sports pro used the big black Canikon, and Uncle Joe, who knows about cmaeras, also uses one. And all the other Joes at the soccer game use the DSLRs. In my observation, fitting in with the group is the main shopping criteria for most of the bulk consumers, with price being no. 2.
Oh good grief. The people who are buying mainstream cameras by the millions are to be looked down upon. We who buy interesting unprofitable cameras in a shrinking segment and pay more for them are smarter, wiser, cleverer, prettier, more popular, and hipper and all in all better.
Quite contrary in Canada. Best buy and Future Shop both carry m4/3 and even Fuji cameras. Wallmarts – im not too sure…i never go there.
Well their bigger all round aren’t they, I mean their cars are bigger they’ve got bigger glove boxes, their bags are bigger, bigger houses, you don’t really care if your camera is a DSLR. So the walmarts probably cater to this. The Japanese and Europeans are more cramped and smaller, they can’t spare the room, kids up yee ya, they just need a little Pen or Gm1, it’ll do them.
Something interesting is that what was originally supposed to be the driving force behind µ4/3 adoption, the entry level models aimed at compact and bridge upgraders are suffering.
The mid to high end models on the other end are doing fairly well as a replacement or complement to DSLRs among the enthusiasts, prosumers and even professionals, which is something µ4/3 never originally meant to be beyond a niche.
That’s the surprise, µ4/3 is doing well competing not only with entry-level APS DSLR, but also with mid-to-high FF ones, while it seems to already have hit its limit against compacts and bridges.
You also have to consider that µ4/3 manages to pull these sales with a large image deficit outside some asian markets, poor to absent marketing, abysmal distribution in most territories.
Crikey I don’t think it’s as bad as all that, your making me depressed
Right. Let’s put things in a bit of perspective. Though the numbers are offset by one quarter, it’s still worth comparing Olympus’ estimate of how many cameras they’ll sell versus the CIPA shipment numbers:
CIPA: 4,300,000 (estimate; currently at 3.8m with two months left)
Olympus: 660,000
That puts Olympus at a 15% market share in mirrorless.
Look, I like the E-M5 and E-M1 a lot. But the total number being sold is a relatively small number measured in the low six figures while low-end DSLRs are selling in the millions of units. The questions have always been: (1) can Olympus really up the volume?; and (2) can Olympus sustain a camera division at these lower sales numbers? So far the answer to #1 has been modest increases this year (good news), and the answer to #2 is unknown. In a Western company with active shareholders, the answer to #2 would be no, but Japan is different.
I want to see Olympus succeed as much as anyone. They’ve produced some very nice products, including one that I now count on for some of my work. But they still have a long way to go to get to a point where they have sustainable profits in cameras.
Perhaps the answer is that the small mirrorless companies will interbreed like we are already seeing, Oly-Sony, Panasonic-Leica, Sigma getting into m4/3?
m4/3 is playing with this great opportunity of short distance to flange being available to adapt all kinds of lenses. So perhaps we will see more multi-headed consortiums, sharing costs. Then one might have to recalculate what are survivable market shares since costs are shared.
Not producing lenses, or very few, and leaving lens makers open mounts is also a way to lessen the investment.
Why would Sigma ramp up to enter a market that by all indications after 4 years never got any profitability traction, and is now threatening to give up what it’s gained? Not to mention, the momentum that was originally announced that promised to bring in so many manufacturers in a common format brought in precisely two, and even they are not seamless in using each others’ lenses. I mean, what would be Sigma’s motivation? The opportunity to lose a hundred million dollars in ramp up and support costs?
“Not to mention, the momentum that was originally announced that promised to bring in so many manufacturers in a common format brought in precisely two”
Hmm yes, last time I looked there were Olympus, Panasonic, Black Magic, Leica, Samyang, Tamron, Sigma, Tokina, Kodak(well ok, you can remove that one) and a few more, and more then 2 of those having a m4.3 body.
Thats ‘a few’ more then 2. You sir are misrepresenting the truth, when done on purpose this is considered telling lies.
“and even they are not seamless in using each others’ lenses.”
Uh yes, that is totally seamless. You are confused by different cameras having different features that may benefit specific lenses. I can use a Panasonic lens on an Olympus body perfectly fine, and the other way around. I can use Samyang, Tokina etc lenses on any body just totally fine.
Again you are misrepresenting things, again when done on purpose that is properly called ‘telling lies’.
“I mean, what would be Sigma’s motivation? The opportunity to lose a hundred million dollars in ramp up and support costs?”
That is just unfounded conjecture. Please come back when you can stop misrepresenting things and can actually make an argument based on something resembling facts and logic.
@thom hogan
You seem to be of the opinion that Western (ie USA) shareholders are superior to Japanese shareholders…. hmmm.
Hey its olympus – who said they give a dam about good accounting 🙂
As long as Canikon press their supply chain and manufacturing advantage, there is no possible growth for these mirrorless. Went to a camera stores after Thanksgiving. GX7 was on sale for $900 with kit lens. D3200 with 2 kit lenses was $500. Canon had similar deals. No one at the crowded counter was interested in looking at mirrorless other than me. I really don’t need graphs or shipping numbers to know who was beating who. With Sigma and Leica entering mirrorless next year, it will only get more crowded. $1k for GX7 w/ no lens or $1400 for E-M1 w/ no lens. It’s likely m43 will continue to lose marketshare within mirrorless. As time goes by, it will become survival of the fittest in mirrorless. Sony will obviously emerge as the top player. I’m not sure whether Olympus or Fuji will be the distant second. Sure, today, Fuji doesn’t have the share, but looking at polls from different camera forums, Fuji has overtaken m43 (both Oly and Pana) in mindshare by a large margin. My guess is that by the end of 2014, Sony will be the clear leader and Fuji will overtake m43. Prices and sensor size plays a big role. m43 have big prices and little sensors.
@calxn
Nokia and Blackberry had that same supply and manufacturing advantage and also tried to mainly compete on pricing. They too like canikon kept misreading the market/consumer and making mistakes. Where are they now????
Sony is already the leader in mirrorless, no need to wait for the future. Fuji or Olympus would just love to be a distant second, instead of the even more distant fourth or fifth (behind Nikon, Samsung, Panasonic) that they are likely to be. All make nice products, but the market is not getting behind items that cost two or three times the amount of mainstream DSLRs because we pretend they are ‘tiny.’
Source?
I’m sorry to burst bubbles here, and I realise you’re all having an intellectual conversation and trying very hard, but the above author was right, m4/3 is when you move from a point and shoot and begin to climb the ladder. It’s a stepping stone that eventually leads to a professional grade machine like a Nikon DF. Your graphs prove it.
I’m sorry to burst bubbles here, and I realise you’re just having an intellectual conversation and trying very hard, but you are wrong, full frame is when you move from a point and shoot and begin to climb the ladder. It’s a stepping stone that eventually leads to a professional grade machine like a Lindhoff or similar large format professional machine. Your graphs prove it.
And eh… Nikon DF? professional grade? lol. Try a D4 someday.
I have the D4 and I’m ordering the DF, it’s smaller but not as small as my E-M1 or Fuji X-Pro1 and it has lots of dials for professional control, more than my D4. I will use both.
Where’s your Sony A7?
I have tried DF today: great OVF, really big and bright. Manual focus with 85mm f1.8 is easy. Jpeg files are good but not mindeblowing (read: nothing new) Raw files: who knows? Nothing reads them..
Cons: price (it’s a marketing milking). Built is quite cheap, EM1 feels more sturdy and solid. Wheels feels cheap. Too many wheels and levers to pull and rotate at the same time.
Love the idea of a camera made only for stills though.
I wondered about the build based on photos alone? Just a look about the finish and the design is a bit “clunky” maybe all those wheels are too thick or something? (the body is way too deep, bloody mirror!) It’s still a great idea, but hard to justify it next to the Sony which can pretty much slot into the same task list …
I don’t think so, for a couple of reasons. First, the offerings from micro 4/3 and other mirrorless systems have reached a point where the differences between mirrorless and DSLR are small (and getting smaller with every market cycle); second, when you buy any ILC camera you buy into a system, with its range of lenses, flashes and so on.
I realize this is a micro 4/3 forum. I have a couple cameras in the format. But no reason to fool ourselves that our format for some reason is the only one that gets better and better, and all other formats, larger or smaller, are just standing still.
There is something called the law of deminishing returns, look it up, it will explain why the gains of the last few years benefit 4/3″ more then 135 format. Also keep in mind that in a few years from now, they’ll benefit 1″ much more then 4/3″
Lol! So Admin claims these graphs are supposed to by good for Olympus! This is getting desperate! Hahahahaha
If you bother to read the graph you would see the sys is the E-M1 and it’s selling very well.
Don’t see the graph showing the EM1 is “selling very well.” There is a quote attributed to the insider. But what is an insider going to tell the industry, other than that the product is doing fine? Let a reporter ask an exec from Ford and you will always hear “sure, that new model is doing great!” Even if they claim an item is selling better than expected, that’s not at all quantifiable unless they state their original expectation.
Following the links, I see graphs showing that interchangeable lens camera sales peaked in 2010, and every year since they have fallen off considerably. This is anything but ‘steady.’
As far as the graph at the top, it shows a small upsurge into October, and this parallels a similar (but much larger) upsurge a year ago at this time. I believe there is an increase shipment every year at this time, and we can’t therefore claim ‘things are looking up’ on a mere typical seasonal blip, especially when the blip is much less YoY from 2012.
Let’s hear real numbers from retailers. For now, I see the EM1 is more or less readily available. Not sure if the EM5 was so available at this point in its cycle?
The EM5 is a failure. Only the Olympus faithful brought it initially. It’s not selling at all, plus Olympus won’t go into sales data for that camera because they will merge it with sales data from the E-M1.
Sorry, “E-P5” is the failure.
I’ve already said it on DPR. Drop in compact sales levelling off. October reverses MILC temporary surge in September.
In October, DSLR surged. Beating MILC in all regions except Asia (other than Japan).
My expectation is that MILC market share of ILC will remain under 20% (unit sales). In terms of value, MILC to remain under 15%.
Plenty scary when 8 brands are fighting for so little.
@happy van
Mirrorless doesn’t have to beat DSLR, it has to keep chipping way, DSLRs have lost 20% market share which will be hurting their bottom line especially since canikon have been slow to reduce costs and have yet to show professionals the direction they intend to tread in the future….
A tipping point will happen as has happened already in their home market of Japan (which should be their most profitable)…
Sorry. Guess you haven’t noticed. Jan-Oct MILC sales in Japan is just 36% of ILC. That’s a double digit loss of market share from 2012. Not good.
Reminds me of the long debate I had with the fanboi on DPR. I won and you lost. The dinosaurs won and the clever little companies lost.
As I have pointed out. Eight MILC brands are battling for a small amount of sales. Wonder who will drop out. My guess is that Sony, Nikon and Canon will stay for the long run.
The camera crisis: Olympus E-M1 selling well. Debunking myths on camera sales (better than expected).
(But still utterly pathetic.)(Fail.)
Go and phuck your self idiot!
Well It seems to me that trying to sell less for more is a losing proposition in the US.
Let’s face facts you can only sell so many idiots 80 to 90% of a camera for 30% more money. I think the saying goes:
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
Personal anecdote: I’ve owned an E-PL5 and seriously considered buying an E-M5 for my main system, and maybe I might when the successor comes and prices drop. But to me Canikon and Sony are still beating m4/3 in the value calculation. Olympus seems to be in full cost-cutting mode now (closing their US repair center and outsourcing repair work; moving even their high-end lens production to China), but I have not seen any attractive discounts for almost 9 months, when they ran their $150 rebates on lenses when buying a body. Canikon are selling FF bodies in the $1300-1700 range, and after adding a few decent lenses the price difference between m4/3 and FF is only several hundred dollars, especially considering sale prices. For someone like me who can’t afford both systems, m4/3 is an attractive option but the value shopper in me went with the 6D.
Well there are imponderables which must be pondered. I.e. to me IBIS is worth, what, 500$. 13 Stop DR about the same?
So only these two features make the price difference with Canon or Nikon valuable. Add other absolute firsts, like Live Time, visible slow shutter exposure, how much should be added?
Yes I am the first to say that m4/3 cams are expensive, and that is why I bought my E-M5 second hand. But still a bargain.
I can also use the same lenses with a pocketable camera. My 2 excellent Sigmas I paid 100 € each. Now what Nikon, what Canon?
+1
Logical! Solid reasoning.
I went with a 6D as well… I still picked up the GX7 too. There’s room for both. But, even I feel that I’m getting to the end of the road with the 16mp 43 sensor. So it’s either go even smaller and sacrifice IQ For size/bulk, or go APS-C.
I feel Panasonic can do all three: FF, APS-C and 43.
@Thom Hogan. CIPA’s forecast mirrorless sales maybe 4.3m (2012 3.9m) but the actual shipments for the first 10 months is not 3.8m but 2.5m. So a realistic outcome for the current year is 3.1m. That would put Olympus’s market share (based on heroically optimistic 660k sales) at 21%.
As for Compact camera, the average price is dropping. The graph shows the number of camera to sell, so the number is steady, the revenue is going down.