Sony A9: Is Canon doomed ?

Tom Reichner wrote in post #18571167
.
RIght, but if Canon can offer only crappy old mirrorless cameras, and Sony offers wonderful full frame mirrorless cameras, but Canon makes more overall money form mirrorless than Sony does, then isn't Canon the clear winner, purely from a money standpoint?

Actually, Olympus may be the real winner, but then again if they've invested a lot of money and Canon ha barely invested anything, then the nod might still go to Canon.

It really has nothing to do with how good the cameras are, or whether they are full frame or not - from a corporate standpoint, the bottom line is all that matters.

.

Hard to say without insight into what Canon and Sony's margins are on their cameras. Very generally, low cost products have lower margins and are positioned to push a lot of volume. We know from Sony's annual reports that there's been a shift to high margin products that by nature will move less volume. (Sony hasn't released a budget oriented mirrorless camera in the past 4 years). Both Sony and Canon's imaging divisions did well from a financial standpoint, so it seems both approaches are doing well.

But Sony and Canon are not targeting the same market segments with their mirrorless cameras so its hard to draw any conclusions on the basis of sales figures, since Canon's strategy will inherently move more volume, and Sony's will move less. It's sort of like trying to make a statement out of the fact that the Toyota Camry outsells the BMW 5 series. It doesn't say much other than the fact that they're targeting different market segments.

Hogloff wrote in post #18571056
Where is the commitment for the M50 as far as lenses go? Sony used to get bashed for their lack of lenses...what about lenses from Canon to match the small mirrorless system?

Oh yeah totally. Fuji and Sony have a rather significant advantage in terms of native glass. But Canon has a huge installed user base with EF glass that dual pixel seems to play well with.

I have yet to see one person shooting Canon mirrorless. But I don't go out often that much. I see Sony A7RII and A7RIII the most followed by Fuji. Canon shooters are dSLR folks.

As consumers, we think only about 'own the market' as the most important thing. Corporations think about 'own the PROFIT', and that can take many different forms of tactics and strategies that do not match what we think they ought to be doing.

We all see the boom days (about 5-6 years ago) for digital cameras and dSLRs, and then view the attempts by Sony to increase market share of cameras (via the mirrorless tactic -- which Olympus created!) as foretelling the doom of the dSLR. In reality, the ENTIRE camera market is shrinking back to unit volumes that reflect a more steady-state replacement market situation, whereas the boom from 2002-2012 was driven by adoption of new technology (over and over by the same buying community) and attracting new buyers to photography at a rate not much better than 30 years ago.

mystik610 wrote in post #18571193
But Sony and Canon are not targeting the same market segments with their mirrorless cameras so its hard to draw any conclusions on the basis of sales figures, since Canon's strategy will inherently move more volume, and Sony's will move less.

.
But market share is based on dollar amounts, not units, right?

I mean, the "market" would be the total amount of money spent on a given set of products, and hence the "market share" would be what portion of that total monetary amount is gathered in by a give manufacturer. . Isn't this correct?


.

mystik610 wrote in post #18571193
Hard to say without insight into what Canon and Sony's margins are on their cameras. Very generally, low cost products have lower margins and are positioned to push a lot of volume. We know from Sony's annual reports that there's been a shift to high margin products that by nature will move less volume. (Sony hasn't released a budget oriented mirrorless camera in the past 4 years). Both Sony and Canon's imaging divisions did well from a financial standpoint, so it seems both approaches are doing well.

But Sony and Canon are not targeting the same market segments with their mirrorless cameras so its hard to draw any conclusions on the basis of sales figures, since Canon's strategy will inherently move more volume, and Sony's will move less. It's sort of like trying to make a statement out of the fact that the Toyota Camry outsells the BMW 5 series. It doesn't say much other than the fact that they're targeting different market segments.

Great analogy, perhaps more so than you realize.

Toyota outsells BMW period, by volume and by financials. Boring, staid updates with reliable parts and good repair services with a lean/Kaizen manufacturing process (Toyota invented Kaizen, Fuji took the term for marketing). The ultimate A to B driving machine.

Meanwhile YouTube, magazine reviewers, and forum goers care more about how fast stuff goes vroom instead of what actually matters to most consumers. Except the first group doesn’t do the buying, the second group does.

Can it get you from point A to B reliably? Is the cost reasonable? How often does it break down? Does it cost a fortune to repair? Are repairs done in a reasonable amount of time and without the mechanic swindling you? Does it hold its resell value well?

Tom Reichner wrote in post #18571214
.
But market share is based on dollar amounts, not units, right?

I mean, the "market" would be the total amount of money spent on a given set of products, and hence the "market share" would be what portion of that total monetary amount is gathered in by a give manufacturer. . Isn't this correct?

.

Well there's unit market share and revenue market share, so it can be either. I believe Wilt's data came from CIPA, which reports unit market share. Either way, market share isn't an indicator of profitability because it says nothing about their margins or cost of sales. And because the margins are presumably different between something like the EOS-M5 and the a9, it's hard to make a statement out of market share as the markets segments are not the same. Apples and oranges.

Unfortunately, not necessarily so. In many of the market share reports, the percentage calculations do not state if they are based on units or dollar volume.

In perusing one set of charts they do show the market share chart is based upon Units (in the table). http://promuser.com …s-and-market-share-report

In another case, the statement by Sony about becoming #2 (passing Nikon) states that their claims are in dollars

"Sony revealed today that its record sales and continued growth has allowed the company to leapfrog Nikon and now trail only Canon. The announcement was based on datacollected by NPD Group’s Retail Tracking Service and considered dollars spend on camera gear between January and February 2017."

Some statistics are clearly Units
https://photographylif​e.com …ing-for-increases-in-2017


From Canon's Q2 report:

"In this quarter as well, sales remained strong, particularly for mirrorless cameras. Within this trend, we grew sales of the EOS M6, a new mirrorless camera that has been highly rated not only for its high image quality, but also for its compact and lightweight form factor. This camera was designed to capture demand from people who, for example, are considering a step up to a camera with more features and better performance. Including this factor, first half unit sales of mirrorless camera grew more than 70% compared to the same period last year, leading to overall sales growth for interchangeable-lens cameras.”

They show that they have 49% of the worldwide interchageable lens camera market.

Stats are always interesting, depending on where and how you draw them from, Here is Amazons list of top selling mirrorless cameras, this one is real time and right up to date but only shows sales from Amazon.com, obviously.

The Amazon top mirrorless selling list

For Market Share, we always looked at the %volume comparison in any given tertiary by units. How much of the customers we captured. Revenue was how much money came in and operating profit was how efficient we were are using that revenue. Market share to me is/was always volume of units sold.

Also, as a follow up, Camry outsells BMW M5 period. Unit volume, $, profits. This is not a hard question at all.

Best selling digital cameras: https://www.amazon.com …s/zgbs/electron​ics/281052

Wilt wrote in post #18571083
So Canon is #2, following Olympus, in the mirrorless segment: Oly has 26.8%, Canon has 18.5%, and Sony has 17.9%.
Is that a picture of doom? I am not being a fanboy, I am reporting Canon's actual place in the market.

What market are those figures for? World wide or Japanese? Are they in units or $$$? As I recall Sony stated a few years ago their focus is on the high end camera market where there is more margin to be made...so if your figures are in units...it would be interesting to see the breakdown in revenue.

Any ideas on your figures here?

Tom Reichner wrote in post #18571109
.
I think it's interesting that Canon is actually ahead of Sony in the mirrorless market. . I mean, the one market that everybody says Sony is "crushing", and here they place 3rd, behind Canon and Olympus!

I think that a lot of folks judge a company on how good its cameras are, instead of on how big their actual market share is and their total profits.

Canon has put so little investment into their mirrorless segment, and yet they still have higher gross sales in mirrorless than Sony does. . Seems like a good business model to me. . Their job isn't to make people happy - it is to get people's money. . And they are doing a fantastic job at that.

.

Tom Reichner wrote in post #18571109
.
I think it's interesting that Canon is actually ahead of Sony in the mirrorless market. . I mean, the one market that everybody says Sony is "crushing", and here they place 3rd, behind Canon and Olympus!

I think that a lot of folks judge a company on how good its cameras are, instead of on how big their actual market share is and their total profits.

Canon has put so little investment into their mirrorless segment, and yet they still have higher gross sales in mirrorless than Sony does. . Seems like a good business model to me. . Their job isn't to make people happy - it is to get people's money. . And they are doing a fantastic job at that.


.

Me as a consumer and not a stock holder really don't give a rats azz how good of job Canon is doing raking in the money if they don't deliver the equipment I need. Too many people get hung up on the we are no. 1 chant. Right now Canon has nothing that interests me one bit in their mirrorless system.

idkdc wrote in post #18571228
Best selling digital cameras: https://www.amazon.com …s/zgbs/electron​ics/281052

Yup. Best selling cameras are basically entry level budget kits that realistically, none of us here use...so yeah market share doesn't really mean squat to us because we are not of the market segment that is moving the needle in terms of market share alone. We're buying the lower volume, higher margin stuff.

Hogloff wrote in post #18571231
What market are those figures for? World wide or Japanese? Are they in units or $$$? As I recall Sony stated a few years ago their focus is on the high end camera market where there is more margin to be made...so if your figures are in units...it would be interesting to see the breakdown in revenue.

Any ideas on your figures here?

Looking back, the data is BCN reports, for Japan.
It is not stated if Units or if Dollars are the basis for calculation of percentage market share.

We all have to keep in mind that so often statistics make things seem best for a particular purpose.

• If the numbers look better for stockholders based upon Units than Dollars, so be it if financially the news is not so good
  
• But f we sell few units yet make tons of money from what we do sell, we tell that story!