[RonHendriks1966]

Olympus (the only company to provide such figure) spend 6.4% of their still camera revenues in associated R&D. Applying this ratio to all competitors, it would mean that the R&D budgets devoted to still cameras and lenses would be as follows:

• Canon: ¥44bn
• Sony: ¥31bn (excluding sensors)
• Nikon: ¥23bn
• Fujifilm: ¥6bn
• Olympus: ¥3.5bn
• Ricoh Imaging: ¥1.2bn.

Hard to know without any real information outside Olympus. My gut feeling says.....Canon spends less then that on r&d and shifts some more towards advertising while Sony (and it looks like Fujifilm also) spends even some more on r&d then that figure. Ricoh-Imaging is in a trapp where they can't fight out because there is no money to spend on advertising nor r&d.

[beholder3]

Sony state that the size of the still camera market is ¥2,400bn, in which they hold

Sadly that is not relevant market share information (unless in a group of friends with 5 people driving a old Ford and one driving a new Porsche all those 6 people would agree that the market share of Porsche in their group is 80% ; I'd be surprised if that was the consensus).



Sony is good at hiding the fact that they are still such a small player with probably even less than 10% it seems. They seem to evade giving information on units sold.


This also is a good explanation, why they really have to fear the entry of any new players. Competition will quickly lead to lower prices and margins as well as further loss of market share.

[clackers]

Well, CIPA figures should give the total cash revenue of the Japanese camera makers.

[Mistral75]

Yes and no: the unit prices used for CIPA calculations are ex works transfer prices, not the actual revenue made by the camera maker from the sale of each and every unit to third parties. The latter is reflected in the consolidated accounts.