[Feb14]

Check this page out!
Digital Camera Sales: Shot Out of a Canon: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

[Dave]

[Dabhand16]

Or to put it another way, 63% of people don't use a Canon

[Rob Barron]

So more than one third of the entire camera sales are Canon and you think the fact that two thirds don't says something? LOL. Think of how many other brands there are out there and you can see that one company dominating the market like that is a massive achievement. It doesn't automatically mean their products are best, there are far too many other variables to consider, e.g. marketing, prices, etc. but if you are not selling quality, you usually get found out pretty quickly.

For me, the surprise is not that Canon are the market leader, that has been the same for years, but that Nikon are relatively low down the scale of ownership with a fairly small 12%. They get a glimmer of encouragement with the survey of what cameras people plan to buy in the coming year moving up to 14% but Canon still dominating the market.

Nikon has always positioned itself at the higher end of the market and are mostly more expensive than other brands despite having brought out a budget DSLR in the D40 to try and take a share of the market completely dominated by the Canon 400D.

Statistics can say all sorts of things, often wrong or misleading things, so this is not about which is best or whatever but clearly in terms of market perception, the name more photographers are being drawn towards is Canon. There must be lessons in there that Nikon must learn if they are to increase their global desirability. They are in a highly competitive market today and can't afford to be too elitist in their market positioning. After all, these things are self-perpetuating. Canon is producing superb cameras at excellent prices. They sell a lot more of them and this allows them to keep their costs lower. Nikon is producing superb cameras but which cost more and this in turn means less units are shifted which in turn keeps the cost higher.

Both companies MUST make their absolute priority people buying into the DSLR market for the first time. Very few Canon owners are going to switch to Nikon or vice versa, brand loyalty is massive as is the cost of changing when you already own quality gear so they need to get people in at ground level as they will mostly continue with the same brand for many years to come. THAT is where Canon are streets ahead of Nikon and any other company which ensures their future market dominance.

Cheers,
Rob

[Dabhand16]

Can I get up now?

[silver]

Statistics can say all sorts of things, often wrong or misleading things

usually the stats are fine,. it's the way people leverage them to push home some unrelated point

if it's about who sold the most cameras or who sold the most burgers then it's easy to agree,.

to most people they choose a camera because it does what they need,. to some people it's about wearing a brand bagde or cheering their football team

Sil