[beholder3]

Some interesting data on where photographer preferences go to.

In 2020 Canon seems to have increased its already leading camera market share even more.

• Canon 47.9％ (+2.5%)
• Sony 22.1% (+1.9%)
• Fujifilm 5.6% (+0.9%)
• Panasonic 4.4% (-0.3%)
• Nikon 13.7% (-4.9%)

Quite an outstanding feat with presumably all the soccer moms now ditching their entry level DSLRs for mirrorless toys.

This means that not only Canon sold one current model to a customer for each old customer leaving DSLRs, but they also did convice a substantial number of photographers over and and above with their products.
This cannibalization issue is nothing which Fuji and Sony suffer as they do not have this transition going on.


I would have expected they (Canon, Nikon) do loose customers much faster than gain new ones if the narrative is true that APSC DSLRs are selling a lot less and (significantly more expensive) FF DSLMs sell a lot more, while a lot of former APSC DSLR users completely switch to smartphones.

At the same time Nikon lost more than 1/4 of all their fewer and fewer remaining customers.

https://www.fujirumors.com/digital-camera-market-share-2020-only-canon-sony-and-fujifilm-grow/

[jersey]

So Pentax is in remaining 6,3% with Ricoh GR, Leica, Halsselblad and others. If they are still making money, and it seems they are, at least recently, then it is quite a feat. Still it is kinda sad to see Nikon going down so rapidly. But then marketshare does not equal profit so maybe they are/will stay afloat even with reduced customer base.

[biz-engineer]

Where is the data to quantify how many users dropped to smartphones, how many users went mirrorless and how many users keep using their DSLR.
I can't put any number, but what I see outdoors is a lot of DSLR users keep using their DSLR, haven't upgraded to anything. When I see cameras out, I still mostly see DSLRs and very few mirrorless cameras except the Fuji X , Canon M and some Sonys FE, but I've yet to see a Canon RF or Nikon Z, so far I haven't seen any, so I really don't know if Canon numbers are real or made up or if the Canon mirrorless number are actually from their entry level M series.

[ThorSanchez]

Quite an outstanding feat with presumably all the soccer moms now ditching their entry level DSLRs for mirrorless toys.

I shoot a lot of soccer games, surrounded by soccer moms. Here's how I'd break down their camera choices:

90% - no camera, just a cell phone
6% - DSLR
2% - Bridge camera
2% - Mirrorless

I rarely see any mirrorless around the youth soccer fields of Maryland and Virginia. At any given game you might see 2-3 DSLRs, including mine. My two boys' teams have me, maybe two other parents out of 60-70* who will take photographs, all with DSLRs. A former player's mom has a part-time photography business and she shoots soccer with a mid-range Canon APS-C DSLR and would just take SOOC jpegs and dump them on the team site unedited.

So from my experience it's not casual soccer moms jumping to mirrorless, it's a subset of semi-serious hobbyists.

* about 17 kids on the roster, two teams, two parents each... 68 parents, not all of them come to every game, 2-3 stand-alone cameras.

[Serkevan]

Where is the data to quantify how many users dropped to smartphones, how many users went mirrorless and how many users keep using their DSLR.
I can't put any number, but what I see outdoors is a lot of DSLR users keep using their DSLR, haven't upgraded to anything. When I see cameras out, I still mostly see DSLRs and very few mirrorless cameras except the Fuji X , Canon M and some Sonys FE, but I've yet to see a Canon RF or Nikon Z, so far I haven't seen any, so I really don't know if Canon numbers are real or made up or if the Canon mirrorless number are actually from their entry level M series.

I've been seeing some more Canon RFs lately. Not as many as I see the good old 6Ds and 5Ds, mind you, but I have seen a handful of Rs and RPs.
Sony is pretty common as well, mostly older A7 versions (which were selling for dirt cheap last year...) and crop.
I haven't seen a single Nikon Z. I've seen more Panasonic Full Frames than Nikon Zs, actually. Okay, I saw two Pannys, but two is more than zero even if statistically irrelevant . The only time I've seen a Z in the flesh was at a Saturn store, when someone was trying the Z7 out a couple years ago. The guy had either a D5 or a gripped D8X0 on a sling, so I guess he was curious about how the new MILC handled and felt.
Interestingly, I'd say that while hiking I always see Nikons the most... but they are basically all DSLRs, mostly D5X00 series.

[Jonathan Mac]

I doubt there's been much of a change for Pentax though I would imagine they're suffering a bit as their lower-tier option, the K-70, is quite long in the tooth by DSLR standards.

Nikon just seem to go from bad to worse. On one hand I feel sorry for them as I respect them as a brand (for some reason) much more than I do Canon or Sony, and on the other hand my limited experience with their DSLRs has bene uniformly bad. I like my F801Ss that I've been using for film recently though it's incredible how many things are just backwards on Nikon cameras.

[BigMackCam]

Sony is pretty common as well, mostly older A7 versions (which were selling for dirt cheap last year...) and crop.

Prior to the Canon RP, those older A7 series bodies were the cheapest entry into full-frame digital, which tempted a lot of folks to either switch or at least pick one up in addition to their existing systems. Also, they were (and still are) an inexpensive way for Sony DSLR / DSLT owners to go full-frame mirrorless whilst continuing to leverage their existing A-mount / Minolta AF-mount glass, by using one of the LA-EAx adapters.

Canon really hit it out of the ball-park with the RP, though, in terms of spec, lens support and pricing. The older A7x bodies no longer look like quite the bargains they were...

[normhead]

I shoot a lot of soccer games, surrounded by soccer moms. Here's how I'd break down their camera choices:

90% - no camera, just a cell phone
6% - DSLR
2% - Bridge camera
2% - Mirrorless

I rarely see any mirrorless around the youth soccer fields of Maryland and Virginia. At any given game you might see 2-3 DSLRs, including mine. My two boys' teams have me, maybe two other parents out of 60-70* who will take photographs, all with DSLRs. A former player's mom has a part-time photography business and she shoots soccer with a mid-range Canon APS-C DSLR and would just take SOOC jpegs and dump them on the team site unedited.

So from my experience it's not casual soccer moms jumping to mirrorless, it's a subset of semi-serious hobbyists.

* about 17 kids on the roster, two teams, two parents each... 68 parents, not all of them come to every game, 2-3 stand-alone cameras.

The thing I'm curious about is actual use.

on Flickr
1 Apple
2 Canon
3 Nikon
4 Sony

Ricoh, Pentax have moved up the Flickr charts, and are now top 10.
Lieca 154 daily users on Flicker

Ricoh 210 Daily users Pentax 100
Ricoh Pentax has actually moved ahead of Lieca in daily use and should be in the #10 up from #12 or 13 a few months ago.

How is this possible you ask. Flickr doesn't measure what people buy, Flickr measures what people use. Personally I'm using a camera that are minimum 5 years old. So my vote doesn't count in the sales numbers, but it counts on Flickr. Why people are so concerned with sales I'm not sure. What counts most for camera companies is the number of people shooing with their gear. Those people are likely future customers.

Pentax keeps moving up the ladder, not because they are winning in sales, but because they are winning in the number of people using their gear. It would appear that people use their Pentax cameras use their cameras longer (because they are better built, probably). The K-5 still has 39 daily users. The K20D still has 11. The Nikon D7100, the K-5 competitor still has 373 users. The cameras were competitor in 2010. The Sony competitor of the time was the a6400. I can't find a single user on the Flickr list.

So have to wonder, why are folks so obsessed with sales numbers? If you bought a mirrorless, you broke it, you bought anther mirrorless. You are one user, not two. Mirrorless numbers look inflated. More were sold, but fewer are out there.

The next on the list would be google Pixel and Pentax won't be catching them any time soon. But they are well ahead of LG. Nokia, and Motorola phones. Count actual users, not month to month sales. Who cares about people who put their cameras away for their vacations and take them out of the closet twice a year? The value of those sales to the companies are a one time deal. By the time they are reported, they are irrelevant. lens sales would be a better metric for ILCs. That indicates some interest in photography, beyond holiday pictures. But even then, if they don't take pictures in them are they really cameras, or expensive space fillers in closets and drawers?

[biz-engineer]

What counts most for camera companies is the number of people shooing with their gear. Those people are likely future customers.

With the category of ILC, the accumulated number of people having a DSLR and DSLR mount lenses since 2010 far out-weight the number of mirrorless in use. Not everyone hangs in camera forums lusting after the latest camera fad, for the vast majority of photographers, their DSLR does the job they won't buy a mirrorless camera for the sake of it. Recently I was looking as a video of Rome, recently recorded since the reopening after covid restictions, I see tourists with DSLR hanging on shoulder. It's just marketing who wants us to believe that we need a mirrorless otherwise we can't take picture, or it's not cool, or whatever..

[Serkevan]

How is this possible you ask. Flickr doesn't measure what people buy, Flickr measures what people use. Personally I'm using a camera that are minimum 5 years old. So my vote doesn't count in the sales numbers, but it counts on Flickr. Why people are so concerned with sales I'm not sure. What counts most for camera companies is the number of people shooing with their gear. Those people are likely future customers.

Pentax keeps moving up the ladder, not because they are winning in sales, but because they are winning in the number of people using their gear. I would appear that people use their Pentax cameras use their cameras longer (because they are better built, probably).

So have to wonder, why are folks so obsessed with sales numbers? If you bought a mirrorless, you broke it, you bought anther mirrorless. You are one user, not two. Mirrorless numbest look inflated. More were sold, but fewer are out there.

I don't think it's that clear cut. If your users uniformly stretch the use of their gear for twice as long as users of other brands the company isn't gonna like that either . If I buy a camera with kit lens and use that to post on Flickr for 5 years, I'm useless to the company.

There's also the fact that Flickr measures what Flickr users use, which may or may not overlap with the actual gear user pool. Instagram brings back ~120 million hits for #Canon, 96M for #Nikon, and 38M for #Apple (#Pentax is at 4.5M, for reference).

---------- Post added 08-09-21 at 07:54 AM ----------

Prior to the Canon RP, those older A7 series bodies were the cheapest entry into full-frame digital, which tempted a lot of folks to either switch or at least pick one up in addition to their existing systems. Also, they were (and still are) an inexpensive way for Sony DSLR / DSLT owners to go full-frame mirrorless whilst continuing to leverage their existing A-mount / Minolta AF-mount glass, by using one of the LA-EAx adapters.

Canon really hit it out of the ball-park with the RP, though, in terms of spec, lens support and pricing. The older A7x bodies no longer look like quite the bargains they were...

Yup, I wouldn't be surprised if the deep discounts I have been seeing1 since late 2019 (for A7i and A7R, mostly) were a response to Canon bringing out the RP. We can complain about the RP not having the best sensor, or the low fps rate, or that it's built to a price point, but... hey, I doubt anyone would be able to tell any actual difference between the RP's photos and those by a Z6, or an A7iii.


1: less than 800€ for a FF body and 28-70 lens is ridiculous, even if the model in question is "old"... we both know that our older gear is more than capable enough of fantastic photos. The lens is probably more suspect here

[normhead]

I don't think it's that clear cut. If your users uniformly stretch the use of their gear for twice as long as users of other brands the company isn't gonna like that either . If I buy a camera with kit lens and use that to post on Flickr for 5 years, I'm useless to the company.

There's also the fact that Flickr measures what Flickr users use, which may or may not overlap with the actual gear user pool. Instagram brings back ~120 million hits for #Canon, 96M for #Nikon, and 38M for #Apple (#Pentax is at 4.5M, for reference).

I can't find your stats anywhere. I have no idea what they mean, could you post a link?

But I did find this.
The majority of instagram users are between 15 and 29. Perhaps a sign of what's coming, but hardly a sign of what is.

The Flickr numbers are compiled as the number of unique users every day. The only stat for Instagram I found was 95 million users a day. SO what does 120 million Canon users mean? What's the time period?

But clearly from what I did read, Instagram is regarded by 32% of users as a their most important social media site. My suspicion is Flickr is more about photography.

Since I don't know much about Instagram I'll have to leave it to others to tell me if that's correct.

[ehrwien]

I can't find your stats anywhere. I have no idea what they mean, could you post a link?

You can add (hash)tags to your photos with the # symbol. And you can subscribe to a certain hashtag, search for it,...

SO what does 120 million Canon users mean? What's the time period?

It's not users, it's the number of posts that are tagged with #canon. It can be 120 million people posting one photo with #canon each, or a single user posting 120 million photos with #canon. Truth is gonna lie somewhere in the middle of those extremes The time period is "all-time"

But clearly from what I did read, Instagram is regarded by 32% of users as a their most important social media site. My suspicion is Flickr is more about photography.
Since I don't know much about Instagram I'll have to leave it to others to tell me if that's correct.

Instagram is aimed at the smartphone generation first and foremost (small resolution, restricted aspect ratios, upload of pictures through the app [or other programs; through the browser only by making the browser impersonate as a mobile device]; no pixelpeeping going on there, and apart from candy colours at max saturation and pictures cropped to the max to focus just on the subject, I like it for the reduction on composition and general impression of an image), but many photographers use it to advertise themselves there, and companies use it to run marketing campaigns, including Ricoh/Pentax who are running an open themed photo challenge with the chance to win a special KP at the moment. News outlets use number of Instagram followers to compare famousness of people or clubs etc....

[normhead]

It's not users, it's the number of posts that are tagged with #canon. It can be 120 million people posting one photo with #canon each, or a single user posting 120 million photos with #canon. Truth is gonna lie somewhere in the middle of those extremes The time period is "all-time

Thanks for that.

[Wheatfield]

So Pentax is in remaining 6,3% with Ricoh GR, Leica, Halsselblad and others. If they are still making money, and it seems they are, at least recently, then it is quite a feat. Still it is kinda sad to see Nikon going down so rapidly. But then marketshare does not equal profit so maybe they are/will stay afloat even with reduced customer base.

Market share on its own has almost nothing to do with profitability.
What Nikon is dealing with is having a relatively large supply chain combined with slumping sales.

I used to operate a very small custom photo lab. My annual sales wouldn't even have registered as a tiny little blip on a market share chart, but because I had zero overhead, zero wages and no supply chain, I was able to make a very healthy income from it.

Nikon is going to have to make some hard decisions regarding their corporate structure in the near future.

A company like Pentax is very well positioned because it doesn't have the boom level supply chain that is eating their lunch.

[texandrews]

Market share on its own has almost nothing to do with profitability.
What Nikon is dealing with is having a relatively large supply chain combined with slumping sales.

I used to operate a very small custom photo lab. My annual sales wouldn't even have registered as a tiny little blip on a market share chart, but because I had zero overhead, zero wages and no supply chain, I was able to make a very healthy income from it.

Nikon is going to have to make some hard decisions regarding their corporate structure in the near future.

A company like Pentax is very well positioned because it doesn't have the boom level supply chain that is eating their lunch.

I want to jump in here and say that Wheatfield's post is an excellent one, IMO. It cuts to the heart of the matter. Pentax shrunk down a long time ago, and has found a way to maintain itself in that smaller state. I don't think Nikon will disappear, but there's trauma ahead for them. Eventually, there will be some pain for Canon as well. Sony is a different animal.