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Canon thinks the camera market will drop by another 50% over the next two years

By Marcus Wong - on 29 Jan 2019, 1:14pm

Canon thinks the camera market will drop by another 50% over the next two years

Digicame-info spotted an interview Canon chairman Fujio Mitarai with Nikkei Asian Review, and in it he talked about the future of the camera business. The article was published in the subscriber section of the news site, but Digicame-info has posted some of the main points on their site.

  • Canon will shift the camera business's focus to corporate customers. In an interview with Nihon Keizai Shimbun President Fujio Mitarai, pointed out that the market for digital cameras could shrink to about half in the next two years.
  • "In our company, cameras have declined at around 10% a year (sales volume) in the past few years (combined with single lens reflex and mirrorless). The world market for interchangeable lens cameras is around 10 million, but this is steadily decreasing. The mirrorless camera segment is indeed growing, but this is a replacement of single lens reflex cameras and not adding to the market as a whole."
  • "People usually shoot with smartphones now. The digital camera market will keep falling for about two years, with professional and advanced amateurs continuing to take up about 5 to 6 million units of interchangeable lens cameras. That should be about the rock-bottom point for the industry."

It’s pretty obvious that mirrorless will take over interchangeable lens cameras to us, as there certainly isn’t much of an advantage (other than better battery life) that typical DSLRs can cling to. If this is why Canon and Nikon have waited so long to come up with serious mirrorless options, then we probably won’t see a flood of new offerings from them after the recent releases (with the exception of perhaps a professional version of the EOS R). Are we going to see the end of the compact camera soon?

Sources: Digicame-info, Canon Rumors, Nikkei Asian Review

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