[Asahiflex]

A Japan market share of nearly 5% may look really small but on a positive note this means that of every 20 DSLR's sold, 1 of them is a Pentax, 8 are Nikons and 11 are Canons (rough numbers). That's quite good actually, especially considering how small the DSLR market is. Being a small player may be good because there are less overhead costs involved...

[mee]

Quantity has never directly translated to quality.
Canon might sell more DLSRs than the others, but there's a reason for this which has nothing to do with Canon cameras being better.

Well, yes, but where has anyone stated the ranks listed are based on quality?

[btnapa]

Japan Has Spoken: Canon Dominates, Sony Dethrones Olympus And Nikon Stutters - DIY Photography


Pentax is # 3, Sony has moved below Pentax.


Interesting read.....not bad for a doomed camera company.

I think these charts are going to change dramatically in the next few years as Sony gets stronger in the mirrorless department and takes more share from Canon, Nikon and the rest of the SLR guys due to their strong mirror less offering. It is a monumental task to take shares from competitors in a mature industry. I am curiously watching the battle.

The only place Ricoh/Pentax is the absolute king is MF. 645Z owns that category, at least for now.

Unfortunately, advertising works and it works well when you throw a lot of money at it. Canon has the cash and is willing to spend it to get the word out. The rest of the market has either fallen sleep behind the wheel or they do not have the resources to do proper advertising. As a result we see the numbers we see.

For pro applications, the ideal camera platform would be the one that you can choose your best body/sensor and use any lens you want on it. Sony is the closest to offering that combo. The rest of the guys come close but not to the same extent.

As far as general market goes, Ashton Kucher can push Nikon gear and Agassi (back in the days) was pushing the Rebel stuff. I guess that is what sways the general public to buy one brand over the other. Not too many people would take the time and research to see that they get more bang for their buck with Pentax vs. the other guys.

Advertising works people... and Pentax sucks at it. I am not sure if its due to falling sleep behind the wheel or lack of money!

[Rondec]

Small technical clarification - very large Revenue with little to no Profit (but the revenue can offset certain system-wide fixed costs, making other, smaller-Revenue activities profitable).

Yes. I'm not business oriented and I think I used the wrong terms. I mean profit, not revenue.

[JimmyDranox]

Comparing Nikon which drops 0.1% in 3 years to Pentax 3% drop (almost half of the market share), we can come to the conclusion that is better to launch many products, even if they prove to have serious flaws, than to wait until you have a perfect one. More if it proved to be not so perfect.

But who knows. Maybe this conclusion is not perfect.

What I am sure about is that name changing hurts business. Always. Give a sign of weakness, indecision, uncertain future to everyone. That exactly what was the feelings even here, in this forum in 2013, and a little in 2014.

[IchabodCrane]

I think these charts are going to change dramatically in the next few years as Sony gets stronger in the mirrorless department and takes more share from Canon, Nikon and the rest of the SLR guys due to their strong mirror less offering. It is a monumental task to take shares from competitors in a mature industry. I am curiously watching the battle.

The only place Ricoh/Pentax is the absolute king is MF. 645Z owns that category, at least for now.

Unfortunately, advertising works and it works well when you throw a lot of money at it. Canon has the cash and is willing to spend it to get the word out. The rest of the market has either fallen sleep behind the wheel or they do not have the resources to do proper advertising. As a result we see the numbers we see.

For pro applications, the ideal camera platform would be the one that you can choose your best body/sensor and use any lens you want on it. Sony is the closest to offering that combo. The rest of the guys come close but not to the same extent.

As far as general market goes, Ashton Kucher can push Nikon gear and Agassi (back in the days) was pushing the Rebel stuff. I guess that is what sways the general public to buy one brand over the other. Not too many people would take the time and research to see that they get more bang for their buck with Pentax vs. the other guys.

Advertising works people... and Pentax sucks at it. I am not sure if its due to falling sleep behind the wheel or lack of money!

I think what sways the public is the ability to pick up a camera and then buy it about anywhere you go coupled with some name recognition. Right now (and I'll speak for the USA only) you can find a Canon everywhere and a Pentax in only a very few places. Ashton Kucher couldn't sell many more Pentax cameras in this situation.

[JimC1101]

I guess. But a camera like the 645z is probably a big money maker, even though in absolute numbers, the sales probably don't make a blip in the overall market. Cameras like the Canon T5 on the other hand, are probably big sellers, but are not big money makers at all. Low end APS-C is a big market with little actual revenue. Pentax's goal is not to out sell entry level APS-C cameras from other makers, but rather to grow their base in such a way that they sell more higher end gear, where real money can be made.

I think they want to sell lenses, that is where the big money maker is.

---------- Post added 02-21-15 at 08:40 AM ----------

I think these charts are going to change dramatically in the next few years as Sony gets stronger in the mirrorless department and takes more share from Canon, Nikon and the rest of the SLR guys due to their strong mirror less offering. It is a monumental task to take shares from competitors in a mature industry. I am curiously watching the battle.

The only place Ricoh/Pentax is the absolute king is MF. 645Z owns that category, at least for now.

Unfortunately, advertising works and it works well when you throw a lot of money at it. Canon has the cash and is willing to spend it to get the word out. The rest of the market has either fallen sleep behind the wheel or they do not have the resources to do proper advertising. As a result we see the numbers we see.

For pro applications, the ideal camera platform would be the one that you can choose your best body/sensor and use any lens you want on it. Sony is the closest to offering that combo. The rest of the guys come close but not to the same extent.

As far as general market goes, Ashton Kucher can push Nikon gear and Agassi (back in the days) was pushing the Rebel stuff. I guess that is what sways the general public to buy one brand over the other. Not too many people would take the time and research to see that they get more bang for their buck with Pentax vs. the other guys.

Advertising works people... and Pentax sucks at it. I am not sure if its due to falling sleep behind the wheel or lack of money!

From what I have seen, mirrorless has somewhat flattened out. It has not been the explosion that others have thought will happen. Canon, Nikon and Pentax are not big in the mirrorless market yet, If it is so great, why haven't the big 2 been pushing it so much ?

[normhead]

It would be nice to see some actual numbers, you can only derive so much from percentages. I remember a few years ago a news article I read was championing the death of Apple, based on declining market share. In the numbers they actually sold about 500,000 more units and had their biggest profit ever.... the analyst never explained how a company could die, while increasing profit and sales numbers. Some of these guys are pretty obtuse.

So, more important to me, is not what their market share is doing, but is their number of base customers increasing or declining.

[THoog]

It would be nice to see some actual numbers, you can only derive so much from percentages.

Agreed - does anyone know if these numbers are based on number of units sold, or value of product sold? Also, I don't know how seriously we can take that 7.5% in the 2012 award - that would have been sales during 2011, the year of the earthquake/tsunami, when Pentax introduced no new DSLRs. I haven't looked to see what Canon and Nikon did. ILCs were counted differently in the years before that, so it's impossible to tell what the trend really is. It could be that ~5% is typical for Pentax, and 7.5% was a spike due to a really unusual year.

[monochrome]

Small technical clarification - very large Revenue with little to no Profit (but the revenue Cash Flow can offset certain system-wide fixed costs, making other, smaller-Revenue activities profitable).

And I incorrectly wrote revenue where I should have written Cash Flow.

Yes. I'm not business oriented and I think I used the wrong terms. I mean profit, not revenue.

Well I'm clearly not photography oriented, especially with wide lenses for landscapes.

[Parallax]

Pentax is # 3, Sony has moved below Pentax.

If you're very quiet, and listen very carefully, you can hear the sound a few people's heads exploding.

[Mistral75]

It would be nice to see some actual numbers, you can only derive so much from percentages. I remember a few years ago a news article I read was championing the death of Apple, based on declining market share. In the numbers they actually sold about 500,000 more units and had their biggest profit ever.... the analyst never explained how a company could die, while increasing profit and sales numbers. Some of these guys are pretty obtuse.

So, more important to me, is not what their market share is doing, but is their number of base customers increasing or declining.

DSLR shipments to Japan according to CIPA:

2012: 1,017,712
2013: 1,447,893
2014: 1,082,010

Pentax share in the Japanese DSLR market according to BCN ranking:

2012: <5.1%
2013: 5.2%
2014: 4.5%

Pentax DSLR shipments to Japan according to yours truly

2012: < 51,900
2013: 75,300
2014: 48,700

(the same calculation for 2011 leads to 110,000 DSLRs and Qs)

[monochrome]

Thank you for real-world numbers Mistral75. Actual shipments are so much clearer than meta values such as market share, which can be determined as much by the known overproduction and involuntary inventory build by the big boys in 2013 as by any loss of sales volume by Pentax.

I was part of a discussion with Jim Malcolm in April, 2013 in which he stated Ricoh intentionally would hold back production to avoid the coming production overshoot they foresaw at the other makers.

[normhead]

That is a very small number of units sold by Pentax for a country the size of Japan..... it does put things in perspective though. I makes you wonder if they top 100,000 DSLR units a year, world wide.

[MadMathMind]

Canon, Nikon and Pentax are not big in the mirrorless market yet, If it is so great, why haven't the big 2 been pushing it so much ?

There's a few factors, of course:
1) Companies are conservative. Big investments in new technologies are risky. Sony has taken many risks; some worked out great (Playstation, a huge leap of faith at the time) but many others...not so much. Some companies can absorb the losses due to the risks better than others.

2) Cannibalization. If Canon sells you a mirrorless camera, you probably will not also buy a DSLR. It's a lateral movement: capturing one market at the cost of another is only a good idea if the other market is drying up. Developing two technologies that eat at each other's sales is a pretty poor business model.

3) Arrogance. Companies don't always get it right. Kodak believed film would be forever and the lucrative professional market would never switch to digital. How did that work out for them?