Canon held a huge presentation in Tokyo (report at DCwatch). The interesting news is that Canon believes the decrease in DSLR sales are just a very short happening. They expect the interchangeable lens camera market to grow again in 2015. The image on top shows the expected growth in Japan.
There is of course no mention at all about future mirrorless strategy. But I think Canon cannot ignore mirrorless anymore…
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Yes, but don’t all camera manufacturers always make such rosy predictions, year after year? Neither the speakers nor the audience much believes them anymore, I fear.
IIRC 2015 was already predicted to have slight growth – due to typical life-cycle of the cameras. This is precisely the bit of information nobody outside the manufacturers knows. By correlating how much they sell which year, they can actually predict the next wave of upgraders.
But of course that doesn’t automatically translate into increased sales for Canon, unless they have convincing products on the shelves.
“There is of course no mention at all about future mirrorless strategy. But I think Canon cannot ignore mirrorless anymore…”
I do not think they do. They have all the tech necessary – but it was not yet put together into a single camera model.
The biggest problem is the AF speed and, with the exception of Panasonic, the sole no-PDAF hold-out(*), the industry actively developing and improving the OS-PDAF. And Canon here is not lagging: 70D and 7D2 do (also) have OS-PDAF. (Whether the 7D2’s implementation of AF is riddled with the same problems as the 70D’s is yet to be seen, though.)
To make the 7D2 a mirrorless, all they have to do is to remove the dedicated PDAF sensor and mirrorbox, and put the EVF (taken from one of their pro camcoders) inside.
(*) Not completely true. Oly E-M1 has Pana sensor with OS-PDAF. Pana has the tech, but is not using it in its own cameras.
Interesting to see Canon that calls the grow in’ interchangeable lens camera’s’
Normally Canon would have said growth in DSLR. Those words were carefully choosen by Canon I guess.
This smells like BS. Their 2014 sales are down dramatically, this ‘expected’ growth looks made up.