[biz-engineer]

What will be interesting will be what CaNik bring to the game.$$$ony have won market share from those 2 mainly.Later this year we will see,so far their M/L offereings have trailed but sold OK due to their brand acceptance.

It doesn't matter mirrorless is better... for business.

[surfar]

mirrorless is better... for business.

Well,so far, its been better for Fuji,$$$ony,Oly,Pano...but not better for Samsung.

CaNik have been treading water,but if we can believe the rumours(very good chance they are authentic) then CaNik want a slice of M/L FF.They have bled customers to $$$$ony and 1/ want to stop the bleeding and 2/ win some back.
So, they have to bring a very,very good product to market to achieve 2,and a reasonable one to achieve 1.

As I said, it WILL be interesting.

What they have on their side is Brand Recognition/Acceptance and in the case of Canon,plenty of R&D resources.

[mecrox]

Where did you get your numbers? Did you even read the post by beholder3? The period is unit sales by month from 2012 through 2017. That’s the x axis of the chart. The y axis is units shipped, so the chart shows units shipped by month from 2012 through 2017, breaking out DLSR and DSLM.. Read the analysis constraints. Look at the numbers. Look at the trend lines. The trend lines are a polynomial analysis of the trends in unit sales by month. It’s high school math and a simple business analysis presentation The trend lines (and the composition of the units sold) are what matters. Your claim about 2017 market share represents what happened in a selected, abnormal three months from Feb - April in 2017. It is selective data mining, and it does not accurately characterize the underlying trend..

Wishing something were true doesn’t make it so. Follow the money and where growth, if any, is coming from. Look also at value per unit. Looking only at unit volume does not tell the story fully. Cheap, low-margin items aren’t necessarily good business. In some industries they indicate a profitless race to the bottom. Canon in their recent annual reports stated this as a target: “2018 - Maintain sales growth, driven by mirrorless cameras where double-digit growth continues.”

Canon could be wildly mistaken, of course, and in a way it would be highly satisfying if they were. However, I doubt milcs can really be seen as a crazed obsession, a modern version of Dutch tulip mania. It’s a long-term technology change, a gradual handover. Not really important, perhaps. Diesel or regular unleaded? Who cares. But either way you can see desperate companies queuing at the pumps.

[surfar]

Canon could be wildly mistaken,

...They arent.

target: “2018 - Maintain sales growth, driven by mirrorless cameras where double-digit growth continues.”

They enjoy being market leader and $$$ony have forced them into FF M/L, a cheap adapter for the EF/s glass and a few native mount lenses and they are in the game.Also in a recent interview $$$ony expects the challenge from CaNik,they are preparing and IF they get their menus a bit simplified AND their WR up to standard then they can take on whatevers thrown at them.

[Rondec]

All camera sales are plateauing. Mirrorless plateaued a little later than digital SLRs since they took longer to mature, but they are definitely at the stage now where people aren't turning over their cameras at the rate they were a few years ago.

Technology sales are very much based on want. You see this with smart phones. I phone sales have definitely leveled out, as have many other smart phones. This isn't because people have turned back to flip phones, but because they are using their old phones longer. If you can use your SLR for five or six years and are satisfied with the image quality, why should you upgrade? The same is true for the mirrorless. Sony gear isn't made to last forever, but certainly if you own an A9 or an A7r III, what is going to get you to upgrade? More megapixels? Faster frame rate? Deeper buffer? 6K video? Somehow all of these things sound fairly trivial to me and unlikely to get people out to buy cameras.

As for Pentax, I wouldn't be surprised if they do mirrorless again down the road, but in their own particular way. Pentax doesn't need to sell millions of cameras to turn a profit and I imagine their cameras are hitting their sales targets just fine. They aren't high enough that they would move the needle for Canon or Sony, but then again, Pentax doesn't have the overhead that those companies have either.

[beholder3]

Mirrorless plateaued a little later

Actually mirrorless never really took off and plateaued much earlier. (see my other post; there is no real gain ever in all the last 6 years)



They never experienced anything even remotely compared to the DSLR boom around 2010/2011.
The ILC market (inlcuding mirrorless) is still being slaughtered by smartphones and all you see is that DSLRs have been shrinking (to still about twice the volumes of mirrorless).

The reason can only be speculated, but it seems likely the few remaining ILC customers buy a DSLM in addition to their DSLR setup and so counteract the exodus of customers better than the other way around.

Overall it is ILC which are becoming dinosaurs. With or without mirror is not of any importance.

The hiking of prices certainly hasnt improved growing their customer base. Seems like Canon, Sony, Nikon all want to be little Leica copies.

[biz-engineer]

Somehow all of these things sound fairly trivial to me and unlikely to get people out to buy cameras.

That's why they are pushing so hard to achieve camera sales.

[monochrome]

Wishing something were true doesn’t make it so. Follow the money and where growth, if any, is coming from. Look also at value per unit. Looking only at unit volume does not tell the story fully. Cheap, low-margin items aren’t necessarily good business. In some industries they indicate a profitless race to the bottom. Canon in their recent annual reports stated this as a target: “2018 - Maintain sales growth, driven by mirrorless cameras where double-digit growth continues.”

Canon could be wildly mistaken, of course, and in a way it would be highly satisfying if they were. However, I doubt milcs can really be seen as a crazed obsession, a modern version of Dutch tulip mania. It’s a long-term technology change, a gradual handover. Not really important, perhaps. Diesel or regular unleaded? Who cares. But either way you can see desperate companies queuing at the pumps.

You just wrote my post. Look at the charts.

[mecrox]

You just wrote my post. Look at the charts.

The charts I've seen don't don't account for revenue, only units. A reasonable scenario is that milcs and dslrs will eventually level out and balance at some ratio or another, but absent Canon and Nikon getting involved fairly fully we are not there yet so we don't know what the eventual balance might be. If they do get involved then come back in a couple of years and take another look might be the best answer. The picture may be clouded by the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, I suspect, leading to an unusual high-tech showcase push by the Japanese imaging companies which wouldn't normally happen. it will take a while for it all to shake down to what consumers are actually prepared to buy.

[k1man]

So nothing counts but the bottom line, how ridiculous the statements are, firstly whatever RICOH/PENTAX do will not be much, with so many cameras and things to update, namely THETA, GR cameras APSC, then K1 lenses and FF, then MEDIUM format where is all the money gonna come from, choose your poison RICOH, impossible to do everything, just logic, sorry to be a ball buster, kind regards Ian

[monochrome]

The charts I've seen don't don't account for revenue, only units. A reasonable scenario is that milcs and dslrs will eventually level out and balance at some ratio or another, but absent Canon and Nikon getting involved fairly fully we are not there yet so we don't know what the eventual balance might be. If they do get involved then come back in a couple of years and take another look might be the best answer. The picture may be clouded by the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, I suspect, leading to an unusual high-tech showcase push by the Japanese imaging companies which wouldn't normally happen. it will take a while for it all to shake down to what consumers are actually prepared to buy.

My main point is and has been the supposed certtainty of DSLM replacing DSLR in the near term isn’t really so certain. There are plenty of well-intentioned people who are quite certain they are correct on both sides of the argument. I’m not certain of anything other than I like the way @beholder3 has presented his data analysis . Until we know DSLM has reached saturation we don’t know it hasn’t.

What surprises me is the various interpretations of the chart work commenters have presented. We’re all looking at the same picture.

[k1man]

the biggest problem i have seen with mirror less cameras is the size of the lenses, same size more or less as FF for the k1 etc but on a piss willy body unless all are F4 or so, crazy but true, ian

[beholder3]

Effectively "being DSLM " from the manufacturer viewpoint is just another way to declare the last iteration of their photographic entertainment electronics devices obsolete and try to have all users replace their products (with a mount change even lenses).
So from seller perspective it makes sense to do everything to explain the new tech is king, the old king is dead.

It's just the same as yesterdays 4k TVs are now obsolete as 5k, 8k gain traction and "obviously" you can only be hip if you buy a new TV set today.

The question is if the shrinking, remaining ILC users (potentially 95% being enthusiasts) are sheepishly following this push for "open your wallets again, big time" or not.

And the evaluation yields different results if you look at it from the seller/wolf side or the buyer/sheep side. For one it is good, for one it is not.

[k1man]

well said i personally like my k1 with grip as i have monster size hands, it is more clued up to photography than i will most probably be, so all this mirror less confusing stuff gets boring, i have pics on flickr dont know how to tell you, but the k1 is the best i have ever owned, ancient owner of k1000 645 x 2 6x7 then 6x7ii, still got k7 plus a few lenses, sorry mate i am rambling, good stuff Pentax, ian

[Pål Jensen]

It doesn't matter mirrorless is better... for business.

It is better for a consumer elcetronic firm like Sony that is present in every consumer electronics store on the planet, along with toasters and washing machines. Sony wasn't able to sell DSLR's to photographers.