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Canon remains top-dog in dSLR market, but Nikon closing in fast

by Tarinder Sandhu on 10 April 2008, 16:17

Tags: Digital SLR Cameras, Canon (TYO:7751)

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IDC (International Data Corporation) recently released its report on global trends and sales in the digital-SLR-camera market in 2007, and there are some interesting numbers.

Total shipments of digital cameras totalled around 131m last year, up 24pc from 2006, and 45pc from 2005.

dSLR year-on-year growth was 41pc, up to 7.5m units, helped by strong demand in the US, Eastern Europe, and parts of Asia.

Canon remained the no.1 dSLR company with approximately 3.2m units shipped. However, the report noted that Nikon, with 3m units, was catching up fast. Sony and Olympus made up the third and fourth places with around 450k apiece.

In the grand scheme of things, Canon remained the no.1 vendor for digital cameras, followed by Sony, shipping some 20.1m units. Kodak came in third, with Samsung, shipping around 12.6m, making the top-four.  

Which digital camera do you own? Have you thought about purchasing a dSLR, if you don't own one already, and, if so, which brand and model?

Canon and Nikon own the dSLR market, but Sony and Samsung are slowly, but surely, launching models that can be considered viable alternatives.

We'd love to hear your thoughts.


HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

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Posted by JimNastics - Thu 10 Apr 2008 16:35
Any stats on how Pentax and Samsung are doing? The K10D and GX10 were / are phenomenal cameras and I hear the GX20 and K20D have followed suit. It'd be nice to see these two making strides, particularly Samsung who have really tried to make an impact with their pricing. It's just a shame that the majority of people are still blinkered by Canon and Nikon.
Posted by Saracen - Thu 10 Apr 2008 17:52
I'll tell you why I'm somewhat blinkered by Canon. I've spent a lot of money on Canon accessories, especially lenses, and I don't fancy selling them all and starting again.

That doesn't mean I can't see the advantages or disadvantages of other makes, and it doesn't mean I might not buy one if I were starting with a clean slate. But the sheer simple fact of it is that I'm not starting with a clean slate …. and neither are a lot of other people. It remains a simple fact that a large percentage of the market are effectively tied in because of their existing investment, and that means the market leaders are likely to retain a large proportion of their existing users on that basis alone.

Also, if you're starting from scratch, selecting your camera means you're also selecting the system you can choose from for lenses. Canon and Nikon have a huge range of lenses, including specialised options like tilt/shirt perspective control lenses, macro (including 5:1 macro), and so on. Yes, I know the Pentax will use any Pentax lens, current or old, and the stabiliser is built into the body, and that's an advantage ….. but …. the range of new lenses is far greater if you go Canon or Nikon, so if you buy into Pentax from a clean slate, you either have to start looking at second hand lenses (which had both advantages and disadvantages), or you have to accept a considerably reduced range of options.

And that brings me on to third-party lenses. In the third party segment, even Nikon play second fiddle to Canon. Tamron, for instance, nearly always produce the Canon variant first, because of the size of the potential market, and the even the Nikon variant can arrive months later. The Pentax variant tends to arrive some time after that …. if it ever does.

Yes, the Pentax cameras are pretty good. But Pentax also alienated a fair few dedicated users with their pricing strategy of their first DSLRs in the UK. I personally know two long-term Pentax fans that were so angry at what they saw as being ripped off that, whether right or not, they sold up ALL their Pentax gear (or in one case, gave a lot of it away) and swore never to buy Pentax again.

Do Pentax make good cameras? Yup. Though with the likes of the D300 to compete against, they're got a tough benchmark to match. But are people “blinkered” for going for Canon or Nikon? No. There are, for many people, very good reasons for doing so.

Pentax certainly haven't yet come up with anything anywhere near good enough to tempt me to sell up my Canon gear to switch …. though Nikon had me thinking about it with the D300.
Posted by BUFF - Fri 11 Apr 2008 01:14
Sony managed to hang onto 3rd place in 2007 with 6% & basically with 1 body, the A100.
They are now upto 4 bodies & at least in Japan their market share has leapt to nearly 15%.
Still a long way from CaNikon's ~40% each but they have more lenses & at least 1 more body to launch in 2008.
Posted by starbuck - Fri 11 Apr 2008 07:19
I have a nikon D50 DSLR, my original choices were between a nikon and canon. Sony are starting to have some really good DSLR's now and normally at a great price. As always though, the amount of megapixels is not as important as the quality of the image produced which is mainly determined by the lens and the firmware on the camera.

I cannot fault my D50 as used it for my friends wedding and got better pictures than the professional photographer did.

I think one of the most important parts of the DSLR market though, is the entry level. Professional photographers will spend thousands on a good setup and know how to tweak them to get the best results. The entry level market is becoming more popular as casual photographers want better quality at a lower price so the entry DSLRs have to take great pictures out of the box as well as having a myrid of options to adjust as the experience of the user increases. DSLR's are cameras which an amatuer will have for years and so the quality of the camera has to justify this.