DSLR Market Shares: Gainers & Losers

Zoltan Arva-Toth | Global | September 11, 2009 | 6 Comments |

Photoscala has posted an interesting Gain & Loss analysis of the worldwide DSLR market, for the period 2006-2008. According to their findings Canon, who were the undisputed worldwide leaders in 2006, have lost 9 percentage points and barely managed to keep their number one position against Nikon, who have gained 4 percentage points in the meantime. The biggest winner is Sony, who managed to more than double their market share, and took the third position from Olympus with ease. The rest of the market is devoid of any major changes, although Panasonic has managed to double its share, partially owing to its introduction of the DMC-G1 (which is, technically speaking, not a DSLR, but is nevertheless included in the figures). Nota bene: Photoscala warns that these numbers, which were derived from multiple sources, are to be taken with a grain of salt, but allegedly “the tendencies have been captured quite accurately”.

Source: Photoscala

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#1 robotslave

I'm a bit curious as to the methodology behind the bar charts...

looking at the pie charts in the original link (http://www.photoscala.de/Artikel/DSLR-Welt-im-Wandel), we can see that Olympus went from 6% market share to 5% market share, while Pentax went from 5% market share to 4% market share.

Yet in the bar graph, Pentax is shown as maintaining constant market share, while Olympus is shown as losing 1%.

Any word on how that bar chart was calculated? Did they use data other than the pie charts?

10:12 am - Monday, September 14, 2009

#2 Zoltan Arva-Toth

While we do not have any specific information on that, this can easily be down to simple rounding issues. For instance, if the share was 4.5% in 2006 and 4.4% in 2008 (these are not actual numbers, just examples), it would show as 5% in the first pie chart and as 4% in the last one (as they do not use decimals), yet as this is actually just a 0.1-percentage-point difference, it would be rounded down to zero in the bar chart.

10:41 am - Monday, September 14, 2009

#3 streetnot

Right, but its still Canon and Nikon and then the rest... looking at stats that have been first translated into % CHANGE then ranked side by side can be a bit misleading.

1:01 am - Tuesday, September 15, 2009

#4 rob

Frankly, I am quite surprised at the rise of Sony's market share. Personally, I do not know anybody who uses Sony dSLR camera. All of my friends and associates use either a Canon or a Nikon and two of them use a Pentax and an Olympus each.

As much as I used to appreciate Konica/Minolta, I still can not convince myself to take Sony camera seriously...

9:34 pm - Tuesday, September 15, 2009

#5 Freeman

I'm not surprise to see Canon dSLR market share drop, especially with all the AF issue the 1D mark III and how Canon chose to handle the issue. Canon need a new breakthrough product and a better QC.

5:39 pm - Friday, September 18, 2009

#6 Taylor

I work for a large Studio and have my choice of many DSLR's. The rise in SONY's market makes perfect sense. I have used many Canon MarkIII's and down and Nikon D3X's and down and I always prefer the Sony A-900 or Sony A-700. The people who don't take Sony seriously or think the world is Canon and Nikon and the rest are living in the past. Pick up a Wall Street Journal. Check out The Cannes World Photography Awards.

4:18 am - Wednesday, January 27, 2010