Canon Loses Market Share to Nikon
Today I wanted to talk about DSLR's market share. I've been acquiring the Internet for information related to the global market share of the DSLR market. I wanted to see who are the gainers and who are losers in the tough and crowded worldwide DSLR market. As you probably know Canon is the leader in this huge market. Nevertheless, it seems that Nikon was doing pretty well and even better than Canon into post three years. I've been looking in a chart graph which compares the growth of several companies like Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Pentax, Panasonic, and you can clearly see that when comparing the change of market share between 2006 and 2008, Canon lost around 9% and Nikon gained around 4%. Furthermore, you can see Sony with around 8% gain and Olympus losing 1%.
Many people will probably say that Nikon has managed to feel and the gasp between consumer DSLR cameras and professional DSLR cameras. There is a huge market in there, and by aiming and targeting this market, Nikon company made a great step in order to enlarge its market share on 2008.
When looking at the global market for DSLR cameras Canon still remained the number one worldwide. What Nikon does better than Canon is shipping their products much faster than Canon. Nikon SLR shipments grew at the 71.1% rate, in comparison to Canon's 29.3% rate. It doesn't mean that Nikon sells more SLR camera than Canon, but it does mean that Nikon understands how the market works and knows that timing is very critical. That's one reason why Nikon announces the new products few months before it is available, in comparison to Canon, which announces its new products only month or so before it is ready for shipment.
When looking at the digital SLR market share in Japan on 2008, you can see that both Canon and Nikon had the same market share of 39.0%. After that you can see Sony with 8.5% market share, Olympus with 3.8% market share, Pentax with 1.6% and Panasonic with 1.4%. So you can clearly see that Nikon was catching up pretty fast with their you DSLR cameras.
By looking at the top selling DSLR cameras in Japan on 2008, you can see that the top selling camera was the Canon rebel XSI with 19.1% market share, on the top second you can find Nikon D60 SLR camera with 10.9% market share, on the third-place the Nikon D80 with 10.6% and onto 4th place you can find the Nikon D40 with 9.1%. You can clearly see that Nikon is taking three places at the Pope for top-selling cameras in Japan on 2008, these are pretty amazing numbers, and it just means that Nikon has been doing their homework to understand what their customers need and provide it in a timely manner.
So it seems not all is going well for Canon. On 2006 Canons has ruled that DSLR market with 47% market share, when Nikon had only 33%. Only a year later, Canon lost 5% of its market share and went down to 42% market share, whether Nikon has gained 7% and went up to 40% market share in the DSLR market.
On 2008 Canons lost another 2% and went down to 38% DSLR market share and Nikon went down to 37% DSLR market share. Both companies lost some market share because a new player was entered the market (on 2006) and that was Sony. Sony purchased Konica Minolta in start producing their own DSLR cameras line called 'Alpha'.
So Sony has taken a quite massive bite from all the other manufacturers. The really jumped happened for Sony on 2008 were more advanced and make sure DSLR cameras were entered into the DSLR market, including a full frame DSLR from Sony alpha range of the SLR cameras.
Yutaka Nakagawa, president of Sony's digital imaging business group, said that sonic company will target for at least 20 to 25% of the world digicam market and even higher share market into DSLR's field, it seems that Sony has become a very serious player that can even extract Canon's and Nikon's domination.
As you can see these are really a tough competition and Canon is no longer the only company that you should admire for its creativeness into digital photography era. I predict that in four years henceforth, Nikon will accommodate a larger market share than Canon, and we will see a growth of Sony digital imaging business group by at least 8%.
However, this game is not only about DSLR cameras, but also about lenses. Canon has managed to produce a large variety of both consumer and professional grade interchangeable lenses and therefore, enabling the consumer who search to buy an entry-level DSLR, to buy some cheap and more affordable Canon interchangeable lenses, in comparison to what Nikon has to offer. Nikon should invest more in producing a wider variety of interchangeable lenses, which will fit perfectly for the entry-level DSLR market.
Summary
So summarizing it all, you can see that Nikon has made a great leap towards becoming the leader in DSLR market. It will take time, maybe for five years of maybe less, and if Canon one do anything about it (I'm not talking only about the Canon EOS 7D), Canon will lose more market share in the following years, and we lose its domination in the DSLR market. It seems that Canon knows what it is doing, and will probably give a tough fight to all the other companies (including Nikon) and the year 2010 will probably will be very interesting with many DSLR announcements and releases from both Nikon and Canon.
0 comments:
Post a Comment