Canon’s “EOS Digital Rebel/EOS Kiss/EOS 300D” digital SLR has sold so well that Canon have recently raised production by 25%, according to a report on Yahoo! News via Reuters:

“Ando said Canon had completed plans to boost monthly production capacity of the “EOS Kiss” by about 25 percent to 100,000 cameras in the first quarter of this year. Half of that capacity is housed in a Taiwan plant and the other half in Japan.

Canon sold 600,000 digital SLRs in 2003, capturing 70 percent of the rapidly growing market and leaving Nikon Corp (7731.T), which did not have a camera anywhere near the “EOS Kiss” model’s price range, in second place with 30 percent.”

Even more interestingly, Canon spokesman Tadaaki Ando, deputy group executive in charge of digital SLRs, strongly hinted that an even cheaper DSLR will be released in about a year’s time:

“Canon’s Ando said a lower-priced digital SLR could be about one year away.

“If it’s not this autumn, then that would probably mean next spring,” Ando said, noting the release would then be one-and-a-half years after the original “EOS Kiss.” “Development times are so much faster than they were in the film age.”

Website: Yahoo! News - “Canon Raises Output of Fast-Selling Kiss Digicam”