BCN Inc., has released the final market shares percentages of the 2012 sales in Japana. These are the results of the digital video and camera market:
Digital camera (integrated lens)
Canon 17.6
Sony Corporation 16.5
Nikon Corporation 14.1
Digital camera (SLR)
Canon 52.7
Nikon Corporation 35.1
Sony Corporation 7.1
Digital camera (SLR mirror-less)
Olympus 29.8
Panasonic 23.3
Sony Corporation 20.1
Digital video camera
Sony Corporation 40.2
Panasonic 24.8
JVC Kenwood 18.2
As you can see Sony made it into the top three of each category. The maybe disappointing news is the DSLR market share which is insignificant compared to the Canon-Nikon duo. So neither the A77 nor the A99 had a significant impact. Sony is doing much better in the mirrorless segment which (in Japan) is exactly as big as the DSLR market.
Amazon ranking (just ro see what’s hot in EU and US):
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36 Responses
The Japan market is not really a indication of the worldwide market, Sony is very well established in developing markets compared to the likes of Nikon due to its strong retail presence. Amazon ranking also not a good measure of overall sale performance.
Yep, Japan always been a very exotic market that didn’t have anything to deal with rest of the world (eg. see Digital video cameras – there’s no Canon in top 3?! Isn’t Canon a second largest company in this market world-wide?)
… I’ll hope sony will focus on the mirrorless side … Lenses please!
Actually BCN doesn’t have exhaustive data in Japan. The data is gathered from only some major stores!
The BCN data represents about 50% of the actual Japanese sales numbers. Whether the stores monitored have a bias one way or another is an open question that’s not been answered to my knowledge. I suspect there is a bias, but there’s no easy way to check for it.
I see no reason for Sony to keep investing in the DSLR market. Despite excellent products they never managed to get a significant share in that segment. Besides that there is a significant shift towards mirrorless camera’s and Sony does have a big share in that.
It would not surprise me if mirrorless quickly becomes a bigger market than the traditional DSLR market. Maybe it already is? I can find charts that say mirrorless is about as big as DSLR, but those are without any notes where the numbers are coming from.
To expand on panhur’s comment before me: get out of the DSLR market and focus on the mirrorless side.
The reason to keep investing in the DSLR market is customers’ mental intertia and existing lenses and accessories. It is a bit different than Adobe Flash.
But if Sony is not making (enough) money in that market, there is no reason to keep catering to a small user base. Daihatsu stopped selling cars in Europe, because despite still selling them, it was not profitable enough.
If…
It’s a bit of a Catch 22. If you give up the DSLR base, you’re sending a message to customers and will lose some. If you don’t give up the DSLR base, you’re pretty much stuck with the customers you have.
The problem I have with Sony is that they’ve changed their minds too many times. There’s not a compelling, clear central mission at the moment. That’s just as true of Canon and Nikon, too. As long as we get this shotgun approach to development, I doubt the overall market will grow. If you’re not satisfied with one of the current cameras out there, you won’t be satisfied with the next round of cameras is my guess, because they’re either more iterations of the same thing or poking at new things without a clear road map forward.
We saw this same problem at the end of the big run-up of the film SLR era. No one knew what was really the next big thing, so they all started poking around. Bridge cameras were semi-popular for a short time, for example. But ultimately, a camera sale is about convenience or performance. 90% of the market wants convenience, and they’re getting more and more better served by smartphones. 10% of the market wants performance, but it seems that always comes with a caveat these days.
I’ve been looking lately at the revenue per employee figures for the camera companies. They’re not good. They’re fairly indicative of an industry that’s overstaffed and has no real growth (e.g. low productivity, thus low or negative ROI).
Frankly, I’m a little worried about Sony. They’ve lately been saying that the thing that will distinguish them is how much technology they throw into the camera. I have two problems with that: (1) virtually all technology they’re talking about is commodity-like and available off-the-shelf somewhere these days, not proprietary; and (2) technology isn’t what the customer wants; the customer wants convenience and performance. It’s what you do with the technology that makes the difference.
Yea, if Sony wants to come back to what it was in 2005 – a niche manufacturer focused only around tiny cameras with no perspectives for anything serious in still photography – then sure, they might skip DSLRs.
But as far as I see – their ambition is much higher then that.
I think your a forgetting the NEX and RX cameras, which are not tiny and neither are DSLRs. Those are the mirrorless cameras I am talking about.
Yes, they are tiny. R-1 wasn’t, RX are. NEXes are as well, even NEX-7 (which is the largest one to date).
Alright, I will meet you halfway and agree the PX100 is tiny, but I would never call the NEX cameras tiny.
7.1 *is* a massive share of Japan’s market. Any company would be nuts ditching those sort of sales.
Ah yes, forgot it was only about the Japanese market. Wonder what it would be worldwide.
Why not? 7.1% of the sales is not nothing! Pentax has a lower marketshare and is still going strong. You can make profit out of a small market share as long as the numbers of saled units is high enough and the profit per unit is high enough. Look at Leica, nowhere near the sales of the other mirrorless cameras, but due to price and sales numbers they cna make a profit out of them (I hope for Leica)
But remember, these sales nubers are only for Japan,other countries other figures.
And yes I think in the end the DSLR will becoe a niche market, but that is still some years away…
That’s 7.1% of a huge market – no way Sony’s going to say no to that kind of money.
I wonder if it still is a huge market. I have seen figures that said that the DSLR market has halved since the mirrorless came along.
That’s not much data. Also, comparing Sony DSLR sales to those of Canikon doesn’t make much sense. Include mirrorless and it will look much better.
would be a lot more interesting to see last year’s shares to see what the trend looks like…
From the same source, BCN:
SLRs and SLTs
2012: Canon 52.7% – Nikon 35.1% – Sony 7.1%
2011: Canon 46.3% – Nikon 39.2% – Pentax 7.5%
Mirrorless cameras
2012: Olympus 29.8% – Panasonic 23.3% – Sony 20.1%
2011: Olympus 36.6% – Panasonic 29.3% – Sony 27.3%
2010: Panasonic 38.7% – Sony 32.2% – Olympus 29.1%
Interchangeable lenses
2012: Canon 23.3% – Nikon 19.6% – Tamron 14.5%
2011: Canon 21.7% – Tamron 20.3% – Nikon 19.7%
2010: Canon 24.9% – Nikon 20.4% – Tamron 15.5%
2009: Canon 26.3% – Nikon 23.2% – Sigma 14.1%
From those figures, Sony’s share of the mirrorless market in Japan appears to have gone down by about 7% in 2012. That is quite a lot.
Despite a drop, m4/3 still seems to have over 50% of the mirrorless market there.
Also interesting that Nikon’s percent of the DSLR market there has fallen by about 4% against Canon – I thought it was the year Nikon were going all out to try and beat Canon in DSLR sales.
Sony should also make a mirrorless camera similar to the Panasonic G series, using a DSLR like body. This camera should have the same E-mount and flange focal distance as the NEX series.
Such a camera would be a best of both worlds By using the LEA2 adaptor, the camera becomes effectively an A-mount SLT. On the other hand, one can use all the adaptors made for NEX that enable you to use all kinds of 3rd party lenses.
What exactly would be the point of that?
For a strart, ergonomics of a DSLR like body is a lot better compared to a NEX camera.
By making a E mount “SLR” camera, Sony could merge the A-mount line of camera’s into the E-mount line. All the benefits of the NEX series, like the capability to use a lot a third party lenses through all the adaptors that are available for E-mount NEX (and not for A-mount SLT) will also be available for “SLR” users, whilst all the advantages/benefits of an A-mount SLT camera (PDAF by using LEA2 adaptor, good EVF, etc.) is retained in thsi E-mount “SLR”.
Actually the ergonomics of a large mirrorless (NEX-7, OMD-5, X-Pro) is a lot closer to the old school film SLRs because DSLR had to gain a LOT of bulk to carry the mirrorbox and the electronics. For people used to DSLR sizes, yes, mirrorless seems small, but historically it is not that bad.
Imagine that you have a camera like the A77. The only difference is that it has E-mount and the E-mount flange focal distance, and that the mirror is placed into an adaptor (like the LEA2). This camera would work and operate like the current SLT-A77.
When you would remove the adaptor, you can use all the stuff that is used on the NEX on this camera.
It would be a very fexible system.
I believe we have that already with the NEX system, the only drawback being the ergonomics, which are actually quite decent on the NEX-7. Your issue, if I am understanding correctly, would be easier solved by adding an additional grip to the NEX.
I agree with Vlad. Add an intelligent grip option and possibly expand the camera’s width and height *slightly* if it goes full-frame to accommodate finger space for larger lens adapters.
There’s only one G-series camera that’s using DSLR-alike body. The GH3. And 99% of people find it totally pointless, as if you can buy mirrorless in a shape of DSLR, you’d end up better buying a real thing, true DSLR.
Only reason to consider it are it’s video capabilities, and these don’t have anything to deal with body shape or form. And still – video people recommend GH2 over GH3. So… don’t overhype Panasonic too much. See their market share – Japan is a huge exception – world-wide they are in the reach of Nikon 1, nowhere near to the Sony or Olympus.
Interesting to see that neither Nikon nor Canon made to the top-three list of mirrorless cameras.
It may be so that the leaders of that market already is set.
/E
For the record, the reason one sticks with SLR/SLT systems is the investment in lenses. It is a major thing to dump a harem (my term) of lenses that one has accumulated over one’s career in order to “embrace the newer, better system”. It’s not mental inertia, but the economy of doing so.
Carlos, the investments we have done in “fat camera” lenses and accessories are certainly causing a huge “lock-in” effect. However, there is an even more major factor causing many of us not be willing to drop our fat camera systems – the AF speed! Particularily in bad light, where it is superior to the PDAF sensors-on-chip used by some mirrorless cameras.
Despite what many laymen thinks – PDAF sensors-on-chip will NEVER be able to compete with the speed performance that the separate PDAF sensors used in the DSLR and SLT systems easily are capable of. This is not something that can be solved with future technical developments of the ON-chip-AF-sensor performance – the laws of physics is the limiting factor here.
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Two important factors when evaluating these figures.
1) The biggest surprise here is that the decrease of Sony market shares during the year 2012 wasn’t even BIGGER! The Thai flooding wiped out ALL Sony SLT, NEX and lens production facilities COMPLETELY. Nikon suffered also but not nearly as much (their figures also decreased). The other camera manufacturers production facilities were hardly affected at all (and the Thai flood really benefitted Canon, getting Christmas sales all year).
2) Japan has always been the worst (camera) market for Sony, for some reason. Worldwide market shares are very different. In the mirrorless market the NEX cameras are already number one, selling about double of the number two.
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Artifact from the (near) future… iOS and Android market share for photography 100% ;>