Why CP+ Was So Grim | Sans Mirror ? mirrorless, interchangeable lens cameras | Thom Hogan
The above is a mirrorless news website supported by Thom Hogan, a Nikon critic.
I posted it here because i think it provides interesting discussion of the more global view of the entire camera market. Also, it seems to explain, indirectly, what Pentax is doing with mirrorless vs DSLRs. I don't know if members here consider Thom to be objective or not, but i thought his global comments and specific ones regarding some mfr seemed to be fair. Nikon and Sony's numbers were due to be released this week and therefore could not be discussed.
I suggest folks read the entire article, but here are some specific quotes i found interesting:
Quote: 1. CIPA released their first 2012 full-year numbers: total shipments of all cameras for the year slipped to 98.1 million units, a 15% year on year drop. Most of that was due to compact cameras, as interchangeable lens camera shipments grew to 20.2 million units, a 28.4% gain. Note that these are shipments from the manufacturers, not sales to customers.
2. The forecasts are a bit of self-prophecy, but rarely tightly accurate. Canon and Nikon are the two primary DSLR makers: they must be forecasting a whopping 17.6% drop in DSLR shipments for 2013 according to CIPA's numbers. That seems to indicate to me that they don't have much in the way of new DSLR models to launch this year. As we note, above, Canon has publicly forecast an increase interchangeable lens camera shipments for 2013, so we're left with five possibilities: (1) the forecasts they gave to CIPA are wrong; (2) Canon's estimates given at their recent press conference will be revised downwards (i.e. were wrong); (3) Nikon is expecting a collapse of DSLR sales; (4) the increase in Canon's interchangeable camera volume comes from increased mirrorless camera shipments; or (5) someone's gaming the forecast system ...
3. As you might guess, the money and the profit is in the DSLR piece of the pie still. Put more bluntly:
DSLR: You have two main companies (Canon and Nikon) dominating the 628b piece. Two other companies (Pentax and Sony) have very small portions of this piece.
Mirrorless: You have nine companies (Canon, Fujifilm, Leica, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax, Samsung, and Sony) scrambling over the smallest 125b piece, with no one having a large enough share by themselves to say they're dominating.
Compacts: You have over a dozen companies (add Casio, GE, plus others) fighting over the rapidly declining 714b piece, again with no one having a large enough share to say they're dominating.
================================================
As i said, the above are just snippets of the whole article so beware
. I've recently been critical of Pentax for not continuing the K01 model line and developing a more competitive mirrorless model. But looking at Item 3 quote, one could conclude that Pentax is doing the right thing by chasing the FF model, rather than the less lucrative mirrorless alternative that i suggested