BCN reports on the annual sales data

BCN released another trend report, this time, forgoing the full frame mirrorless segment and looking at the overall market.

According to BCN, which one of Japan's largest aggregate sales data companies that actually publically posts relevant camera company data, the market overall is still declining, in terms of both units and sales, and the big loss leader is Nikon in Japan.

On the positive front, Fujifilm has shown good gains in unit sales, however, their slice of the market remains rather small, so it's easier to have impressive unit sales gains as a percentage of year on year sales, even though the actual number of sales is far more marginal. For instance, Fujifilm's 119% growth really only changed their overall marketshare 1%.  Olympus's losses seem to be Fujifilm's gain, as Olympus has shed around 14% of their marketshare year on year.

I think we've had good indicators of Nikon's problems in the past where BCN has tabulated the mirrorless full frame market and has shown little in the way of traction with the Z series cameras.  While the overall full frame market is such a small slice of the overall market, the release of the Z series cameras, and the assured dampening of DSLR sales because of the new Z mount would be one reason for the dramatic losses year on year for Nikon.  One surprise is that Olympus is also suffering even after launching their newest flagship camera the Olympus E-M1X.

Canon has seemed to have faired through this navigation better (at least in Japan) where their sales by units are only down marginally, and around 12% for the year in terms of sales amount.  I know some sites will make more of an issue over this than others, however considering that this was a disruptive year for Canon, this is probably the best they could hope for.  Nikon's year on year is probably the worst case scenario on how this disruption could have looked.