Full 2013 Japanese camera sales data. Olympus and Sony rule.

BCNranking posted the full exact single camera sales numbers for 2013. Mirrorless conquered 40% of all interchangeable camera sales. And the most sold mirrorless camera was the Sony NEX-5r.

If you sum all camera sales than you will get these market shares within the mirrorless world:

Olympus 29.1%

Sony 26.4%,

Panasonic 14.2%,

Ricoh imaging 9.8%, 

Nikon 9.34%

Canon 9.25%.

 

Surprised to see that Canon still has 10% share, not so far behind Panasonic!

Credit Suisse: “Smartphones Shatter Mirrorless Hopes”

Yu Yoshida is analyst at Credit Suisse and he debunked the mirrorless hype in his latest Interview with Reuters. The main reason why mirrorless isn’t really growing anymore is that “buyers put connectivity above picture quality” and:

Consumers don’t want to connect cameras to phones, analysts say; they want a single interface that can instantly upload photographs to social networking sites such as Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc.

Mirrorless isn’t catching up in USA and Europe because “consumers tend to equate image quality with size and heft

And in the long term only Canon-Nikon and Sony are likely to stay in the digital camera business.

Mirrorlessrumors opinion:

I am neither a well paid analyst nor a marketing expert. But all I can say is that it’s years now that I hear that small manufacturers like Pentax, Olympus and so on will die. And it never happens. Probably because analyst tend to focus on numbers and do not see the full picture. Olympus for example keeps the digital camera business alive also because the profitable medical business can take advantage of the sensor and imaging technology coming from the camera division. And than there is that Japanese culture that doesn’t fit with the western idea that what’s unprofitable has to be sold or closed.

My guess, the Reuters analyst is plain wrong with his forecast :)

Why Mirrorless?

Why Mirrorless ?

What is a Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera (MILC)

and

How does it differ from a Digital Single Lens Reflex Camera (DSLR) ?

Read more

Firmware update for NX300

There is a new firmware update (ver.1.33) for Samsung NX300 since 15th of December 2013. Here is the list of improvements:

  1. Remote ViewFinder – add touch AF function

  2. Remote ViewFinder – add streaming quality option

  3. Improved connection speed of android smart phone (Please use latest version of Upgrade Smart Camera App)

  4. Improved Movie recording (Framing Mode ON)

  5. Improved 60mm,85mm lens full time manual focus performance

link: http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/EV-NX300ZBQUUS#firmware

 

UPDATE: Nicholas sent us this nice comparison image:

 

Nikon about latest mirrorless cameras trend: Classic design and big sensor mirrorless are just a hype!

Nikon Manager Mr. Nobuaki Sasakaki has been interviewed at DC.watch (google translation here). I do not speak Japanese so I rely on Google Translation tool. But it looks like the Nikon Manager keeps defending their Nikon 1 system by continually saying that sensor size doesn’t really matter a lot. And he also goes that far and says that Classic Design and Big Sensor trend of mirrorless cameras from other manufacturers are more or less just “hype”.

And you can understand clearly from many statements how Nikons focus will still be on the DSLR market.

I think Nikon is going to loose this game if they keep under estimating the mirrorless market. A real risk for a company that earns most of their money from the digital photography market!

P.S.: By the way, isn’t the Nikon DF also a classic designed camera…and therefore a hype? :)