What I'm saying is that Nikon had the largest slice of the pie in terms of camera/gear sales to professional photographers for atleast three decades..
Whilst I was working as a pro-photographer I would sometimes go to international sporting events in Australia.. Nikon always had a gear available to accredited shooters.. I never saw this deal from Canon..
Maybe today things are different..
In the US Canon Cameras were distributed by Bell & Howell until the early 70's. THey concentrated on the consumer market.
The pro series, Nikon F competitor, Canon F-1 wasn't introduced until 1971. Nikon had the 35mm pro market almost all to themselves. The F-1 was just as robust and adaptable as the Nikon pro cameras, but by then, it was hard for Canon to get pros to make the change.
Nikon earned their pro reputation by building cameras and lenses built like tanks. It was not unusual to see a black body Nikon F with most of the black paint worn off, dents all over it and caked with mud, still taking great pictures. Even though Nikon had the rep fro toughness, even back then Canon had the reputation fro superior glass, especially long lenses. Marty Forscher of Professional Camera Repair in New York did a big business in adapting Canon gray barrels to Nikon bodies.
Nikon is a much smaller company than Canon. Canon has much more experience with electro mechanical devices, so when the camera market made the move to electronics and new construction, Nikon was left behind. Canon saw a great increase in their share of the market from the late 70's through the late 90's. They simply had the expertise to capitalize on the new cameras.
Nikon has become much better at the electronics end of camera design and they have closed the gap in the last few years. I think from now on we will see these two comanies swapping the lead back and forth.
and it seems that canon has a bigger market share here also.... (i am guessing though not base on facts) 
