p.13 #2 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
mawz wrote:
Smartphones killed the P&S market, not the DSLR market. The only people choosing smartphones over DSLR's never needed a DSLR in the first place and would be choosing a P&S if those weren't terrible values. They were only buying because the idea that DSLR's were for everyone (which is the underlying cause of the boom, just like the AE and AF booms)
The DSLR market is seeing the exact same behaviour as the aftermath of the AE and AF booms, where a large chunk of buyers who never needed one in the first place exit the market. They are exiting to Smartphones, but would have exited to P&S's if those still existed. It was folly to expect that the boom volumes would last.
DSLR/ILC volumes are headed right back to where they should be, consistent with pre-boom volumes with population growth and a modest expansion to the overall market from the boom. Naturally this results in a massive lose in sales numbers as the boom implodes....Show more →
When have SLR's experienced now 5 years of double digit percentage drops in sales before? What years please?
p.13 #3 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
chez wrote:
Ratty, are you saying today Canon would not like a 25% boost in revenue that is going to mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras?
Canon, I'm guessing, would like every last dollar that they can get.
chez wrote:
Given its financial statements for the last few years, I would think Canon would welcome the mirrorless revenues.
Canon has chosen to devote resources elsewhere. Canon is an enormous company with their hands in many many different businesses. Seeing that very few camera makers actually turn a profit, it looks to be a very smart move on Canon's part to limit their exposure to an industry that is very clearly in steep decline.
chez wrote:
As far as the camera market is on a spiral down...have you ever compared the sales of cameras in the 90's...film hey day to today's sales. You'd be surprised there are still much more cameras being sold today than any year in the 90's.
Your observation above is rather shallow and does not hold up to scrutiny. It is not reasonable at all to suggest that camera sales falling to the pre-digital level would be satisfactory,
Here's why. The market is much larger now. The population of consumer is MUCH larger than it was 20 years ago. In China alone there are over 100 million more middle class people. India has added 20 million or more people to their middle class. North America and Europe have natural population growth as well. All these people have surplus money to spend and the vast majority are clearly NOT buying DSLR's Mirrorless, or compact cameras. They are using smart phones to record their live's memories.
If mirrorless were truly successful, sales should be increasing year after year after year, simply because there are more available buyers today than yesterday. The market is growing and yet these companies are selling less and less. Example: GM is selling up to 10 million more cars this year than in the 1990's because they have 10 million sales in China. The market is larger now so GM sells more cars.
The mirrorless cameras being made today are VERY good cameras. Very good, yet they struggle for sales volume. This is a clear indication that the forces working against mirrorless (and all traditional cameras really) is extremely strong, and unlikely to be overcome by the camera manufacturers. To some extent, they have lost control of their own destiny.
p.13 #4 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
mawz wrote:
Smartphones killed the P&S market, not the DSLR market. The only people choosing smartphones over DSLR's never needed a DSLR in the first place and would be choosing a P&S if those weren't terrible values. They were only buying because the idea that DSLR's were for everyone (which is the underlying cause of the boom, just like the AE and AF booms)
The DSLR market is seeing the exact same behaviour as the aftermath of the AE and AF booms, where a large chunk of buyers who never needed one in the first place exit the market. They are exiting to Smartphones, but would have exited to P&S's if those still existed. It was folly to expect that the boom volumes would last.
DSLR/ILC volumes are headed right back to where they should be, consistent with pre-boom volumes with population growth and a modest expansion to the overall market from the boom. Naturally this results in a massive lose in sales numbers as the boom implodes....Show more →
p.13 #6 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
rattymouse wrote:
Canon, I'm guessing, would like every last dollar that they can get.
Canon has chosen to devote resources elsewhere. Canon is an enormous company with their hands in many many different businesses. Seeing that very few camera makers actually turn a profit, it looks to be a very smart move on Canon's part to limit their exposure to an industry that is very clearly in steep decline.
Your observation above is rather shallow and does not hold up to scrutiny. It is not reasonable at all to suggest that camera sales falling to the pre-digital level would be satisfactory,
Here's why. The market is much larger now. The population of consumer is MUCH larger than it was 20 years ago. In China alone there are over 100 million more middle class people. India has added 20 million or more people to their middle class. North America and Europe have natural population growth as well. All these people have surplus money to spend and the vast majority are clearly NOT buying DSLR's Mirrorless, or compact cameras. They are using smart phones to record their live's memories.
If mirrorless were truly successful, sales should be increasing year after year after year, simply because there are more available buyers today than yesterday. The market is growing and yet these companies are selling less and less. Example: GM is selling up to 10 million more cars this year than in the 1990's because they have 10 million sales in China. The market is larger now so GM sells more cars.
The mirrorless cameras being made today are VERY good cameras. Very good, yet they struggle for sales volume. This is a clear indication that the forces working against mirrorless (and all traditional cameras really) is extremely strong, and unlikely to be overcome by the camera manufacturers. To some extent, they have lost control of their own destiny. ...Show more →
Or the glut of cameras sold in the last 15 years since digital took over needs to work its way out of the system. I wouldn't doubt it that more cameras were sold during the digital boom than all other years combined.
p.13 #7 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
chez wrote:
What years have SLR'd exhibited such growth as in the digital era. The higher you climb.,,the further you drop.
It was posited that camera sales declined to normal levels after the rush to AE and AF so presumably they must have gone up. Otherwise the point made on this forum by Mawz makes no sense.
p.13 #8 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
Well as other have said the P&S market has shrunk. The market for amateur/professional gear has never been stronger an will grow with China, Africa etc. getting more advanced. It's two different markets and does not matter unless a manufacturer has invested unvicely against an obvious change that was bound to happen.
As for mirrorless vs. DSLR I consider it the same thing with different flavors and you can never offer the same flavor to everyone. Mirrorless solutions are relatively new and will probably continue to grow in market share. Canon has already entered but has seemingly decided to target the lower end since they are heavily invested in high end DSLR gear. My guess is that the eos-m system will get more attention if sales of the xxxD get a serious dip. ....and there must be meeting right now at the Nikon headqarters!
p.13 #9 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
chez wrote:
Or the glut of cameras sold in the last 15 years since digital took over needs to work its way out of the system. I wouldn't doubt it that more cameras were sold during the digital boom than all other years combined.
This makes no sense. You have millions upon millions of people achieving middle class status in certain countries and they are not buying cameras because people from years ago already bought them? How can this make any sense at all?
You lack a very basic understanding of the world outside of your little sphere. People are spending money, gobs of money in places like China. The kids I hired during the past 5 years (25 year old young professionals) all bought their first cars, their first homes, in many cases things that their parents never had! There is enormous wealth in China as they are industrializing at a very fast rate (or were so, today things are slowing down). 100 million people went from stark poverty to comfortable middle class life in the past generation. Let me say that again, 100 million people. They are not buying cameras, they are buying smart phones. Very very few have anything more than this.
You suggest that they are not buying cameras because a glut exists in the market. How you can propose this is incomprehensible to me.
p.13 #10 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
chez wrote:
Exactly...
This is very funny. You say exactly, yet you clearly have no understanding of the post at all! Please re-read the second to the last paragraph and then try to understand it. You are missing the point completely.
p.13 #11 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
First person to mention it. I noticed it from day one.
jcolwell wrote:
Am I the first person to notice that there's an "i" missing from "mrrorless", in the thread title, or just the first person to mention it?
p.13 #12 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
rattymouse wrote:
It was posited that camera sales declined to normal levels after the rush to AE and AF so presumably they must have gone up. Otherwise the point made on this forum by Mawz makes no sense.
Sure they went up...but not in the same magnitude as the digital revolution. Like I said, it would be interesting to compare the volume of digital cameras sold, not phones, against all other analog cameras that preceded digital. My hunch is we would see more digital cameras sold than analog. Is it no wonder the sales are now declining to the level of stabalization. Did you really think the camera industry would continue at such a pace? Is this drop in sales such a surprise to you?
p.13 #13 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
rattymouse wrote:
This is very funny. You say exactly, yet you clearly have no understanding of the post at all! Please re-read the second to the last paragraph and then try to understand it. You are missing the point completely.
Exactly that camera sales are stabilizing from the digital boom. Heading back to their normal progressive growth once stabilized. I totally understood the post. You, maybe should reread it.
p.13 #14 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
rattymouse wrote:
When have SLR's experienced now 5 years of double digit percentage drops in sales before? What years please?
post-1991, and to some extent post-1979 (the rise of AF curtailed the AE drop). In both cases, P&S cameras took the missing sales so the overall market didn't drop like it has of late.
It's worth noting that the end of the AE and AF booms were big enough busts that the overall market droped quite noticeably for 2-3 years despite the sales shifting to P&S's.
p.13 #15 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
This makes no sense. You have millions upon millions of people achieving middle class status in certain countries and they are not buying cameras because people from years ago already bought them? How can this make any sense at all?
You lack a very basic understanding of the world outside of your little sphere. People are spending money, gobs of money in places like China. The kids I hired during the past 5 years (25 year old young professionals) all bought their first cars, their first homes, in many cases things that their parents never had! There is enormous wealth in China as they are industrializing at a very fast rate (or were so, today things are slowing down). 100 million people went from stark poverty to comfortable middle class life in the past generation. Let me say that again, 100 million people. They are not buying cameras, they are buying smart phones. Very very few have anything more than this.
You suggest that they are not buying cameras because a glut exists in the market. How you can propose this is incomprehensible to me.
The problem with this is the base market hasn't grown nearly as much as you think, and the boom was much larger than you give it credit for. The base market grew by maybe 10-15%, but the bubble doubled sales. We haven't seen things settle down yet, and we are simultaneously seeing the destruction of the P&S market, which traditionally had eaten up the losses after the SLR bubbles. And it's combined with a much longer than normal bout of economic trouble (both SLR bubbles popping coincided with economic troubles, but neither lasted as long as the current set is).
Most people don't need a DSLR or mirrorless. Heck, most avid picture takers don't. Huge numbers of these people bought DSLR's during the boom, from a combination of them being status symbols and a lack of decent P&S's. Those people now use their smartphones (which generally are better than P&S's were 5-10 years ago). The same thing happened in the late 70's (AE boom) and late 80's/early 90's (AF boom). The death of the P&S markets is simply shifting these people from P&S's to Smartphones. This is a natural correction to an massive bubble.
There's also a huge glut in the used DSLR market, because there hasn't been any groundbreaking changes in that market since the D800. The bubble collapse has flooded millions of bodies onto the market, at low cost (since much of the flood is in the consumer bracket).
p.13 #16 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
The last DSLR I bought was a 5D II, I've bought 2 mirrorless cameras since then. I know several people who have bought mirrorless cameras and have sold their DSLRs. I know people who are considering either adding a mirrorless camera and are even considering selling their DSLR. I would not marginalize this and assume the majority would have bought a P&S or nothing.
In any event, no one is going change each other's mind as there is no real way to "prove" this. But I personally know of no one who has bought a mirrorless camera in lieu of a P&S, and I know quite a few that have in lieu of a DSLR.
jctriguy wrote:
I certainly disagree with you and chez making a direct one to one cause and effect relationship. I think we should consider the larger market of 'advanced' camera buyers. I suspect that just as many mirrorless buyers would either buy nothing/get an advanced P&S as would buy a DSLR if mirrorless didn't exist. I don't think everyone going for a mirrorless is focused on interchangeable lenses, I think they are going for size and better quality compared to their current cell phone or P&S. Most are still getting smaller sensors, not FF like most on FM, so it isn't a stretch to think that many people would likely be happy with an rx100 or g7x instead of a mirrorless option.
p.13 #17 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
jcolwell wrote:
Am I the first person to notice that there's an "i" missing from "mrrorless", in the thread title, or just the first person to mention it?
Jim, that's the new "street lingo". Much like the rapper 50 cent is not really "fifty cent", but "fiddy cent". My spelling stands as is.
p.13 #19 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
chez wrote:
Exactly that camera sales are stabilizing from the digital boom. Heading back to their normal progressive growth once stabilized. I totally understood the post. You, maybe should reread it.
Nope, you dont understand it. Otherwise you could not stand behind such a fallacy. That's fine if it suits you.
p.13 #20 · CaNikon will have to enter the mirrorless market.....
mawz wrote:
The problem with this is the base market hasn't grown nearly as much as you think, and the boom was much larger than you give it credit for. The base market grew by maybe 10-15%, but the bubble doubled sales. We haven't seen things settle down yet, and we are simultaneously seeing the destruction of the P&S market, which traditionally had eaten up the losses after the SLR bubbles.
Imagine the iPhone never existed, nor any other smart phone. In such a world a digital camera would be needed to capture life's memories. With China's 100 million new middle class as an example, your saying that the market would still contract then? If only 10% of the middle class bought a camera, that's 10 million more sales than we have today. Ten million!! Then add India, and all the other countries that have clearly visible developing middle classes. I see today a far greater market than existed in the late film era. When I first went to China in the mid '90s, very few people had cars. Today, the traffic is murder, absolutely murder. Why? Because there is a huge customer base for cars. Cameras *should* be riding that gravy train too but they are not. Even in an exploding market like China, sales are down hard.
I think the % of people who own cameras is far higher than 10%, thus I think your supposed facts above are incorrect.
