BCN Report - Canon slipping in Japan

An interesting report was articled in BCN recently about the state of full frame (and the camera industry as a whole) with respects to how well Canon, Nikon and Sony were doing.  Unlike most BCN reports, this one borders on some strong hyperbole, or it's simply google translate taking things a bit too strongly in this translation from Japanese.

Simply put, Sony's share of both mirrorless full frame and overall full frame sales in Japan has grown, and Sony for the last year is the #1 vendor of full frame cameras in Japan (now all of a sudden BCN data is relevant to Sony people).

The gist of the numbers are;

ILC Market Growth in Japan;

• Sony… Number of units 119.4% / Amount 131.2%
• Canon… Number of units 87.2% / amount 84.2%
• Nikon… 75.4% in number / 73.2%

Smaller than full frame market growth in Japan;

• Sony… number 119.5% / amount 144.4%
• Canon… Number of units 86.1% / amount 82.6%
• Nikon… Number of units 75.0% / amount 66.9%

Full frame market in Japan

• Sony… Number 118.9% / Amount 117.3%
• Canon… Number of units 106.6% / amount 92.8%
• Nikon… Number of units 86.3% / amount 86.4%

It should be noted that full frame only is 6.4% of the entire ILC market in Japan, and the overall market for ILC's in Japan is;

• Canon - 41.7%
• Nikon - 16.9%
• Sony - 15.8%

I think it stands to reason we'd see this happen over the course of the last year, how many people have been saying they'll wait until either their specific needs are met in terms of camera body or lenses for the RF mount.  EF mount sales certainly have to be crumbling, because of simply the message Canon has been putting out with respects to the RF mount.  Simpy being; RF mount is the future.  As we have been saying for a year now, this turn to the RF mount (and Z mount for Nikon) is going to be short term pain for both companies.  You don't build an ecosystem overnight, and it will take some time to catch up to the considerable lead that Sony has.  Also, Canon and Nikon have made in effect, Sony more relevant by adopting new mirrorless mounts as well.

From what we've seen over the summer it also seems that a lot of Sony growth has been in the early summer, and they had gained momentum as September approached.  It would be interesting to see more of a trendline for the entire year, but this was not supplied by BCN.

• BCN Report