Canon in Trouble?

Just an opinion. I think Canon has gone off track recently and are in the process of loosing clients due to their recent complacency. Nikon is now number one in Japan and Pentax have taken an even larger market share of 12.8 percent.

Just my take.

Ben

Benjamin Kanarek said:

Just an opinion. I think Canon has gone off track recently and are in the process of loosing clients due to their recent complacency. Nikon is now number one in Japan and Pentax have taken an even larger market share of 12.8 percent.

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FWIW, which information source(s) did you use? Total market penetration, recent sales in Japan only, annual figures, last month only, in/ex backordered products, shipments to dealers or actual OTC sales to end-users, etc., etc.?

Any idea about postponed sales in anticipation of 1D Mark III, or are we talking about P/S cameras, competition of mobile phones, or all of them?

Just wondering, not that it influences my choices,
Bart

Oddly enough Pentax has always had a better market share in Japan than than they do in the US, at least since the late 70's. In reality Pentax was one of the market leaders in the US back in the 60's and 70's, with even more sales than Canon in those days. They have also been in the business for much longer than Nikon and Canon. Pretty much everyone in Japan knows of Pentax, however here in the US I run into people nearly every week that look at my camera and comment that they have never heard of Pentax.

Kyle

Odd...

Kyle Nagel said:

Oddly enough Pentax has always had a better market share in Japan than than they do in the US, at least since the late 70's. In reality Pentax was one of the market leaders in the US back in the 60's and 70's, with even more sales than Canon in those days. They have also been in the business for much longer than Nikon and Canon. Pretty much everyone in Japan knows of Pentax, however here in the US I run into people nearly every week that look at my camera and comment that they have never heard of Pentax.

Kyle

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Now that IS Odd...They are just going to have to spend more money in Media.

Benjamin Kanarek said:

They are just going to have to spend more money in Media.

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Maybe they could find a bunch of photographers, say some that are always talking about their cameras and lenses and posting it on the internet, then they could give free promotional cameras and lenses to these photographers so they could get some exposure for their cameras...Hhmmmm...I wonder where they could find some photographers like that? ;>)

Kyle

"Trouble" may be yet to come....

As Bart noted, I think we need a little more drill-down on those numbers. The digital camera market is a pretty big place -- ranging from $100 digicams to $30K+ MF cameras with digital backs. It sure seems as though Canon is doing well in most of the key market segments. For instance, it still appears that Canon continues to hold a comfortable market share advantage among professional photographers (particularly photojournalists). And Canon still seems to be doing well in the DSLR market segment (although Nikon, Pentax, et al, seem to have narrowed the gap somewhat).

Keep in mind all market share numbers are trailing-edge indicators. They measure units/revenue over some period of time that has already occurred. While that is useful information, it doesn’t always indicate future performance. For example, the 1D Mk III will undoubtedly churn the Canon high-end customer base and possibly add some new customers. There hasn’t been a truly “new” 1D for about two years, so we’ll see what impact that has on future market share numbers. The competition will also be introducing new products which will churn their respective customer bases. Somehow you have to factor installed base churn into the equation to determine real changes in market share over time.

I’m not sure your characterization of Canon as complacent is wholly accurate. I think what we are seeing is a fundamental change in the marketplace. For the past few years adding megapixels seemed to be the primary way of improving image quality in new products. From an engineering perspective that was fairly easy (just as throwing more main memory at computers was an easy way of dramatically improving performance for a while). Things are changing. I think the 1D Mark III announcement demonstrates that future IQ improvements will come from a more complicated mixture of product enhancements. Hence, I think the rate of dramatic product improvements will decline as Nikon, Pentax and others will face the same engineering issues (keep in mind the competition are playing catch-up to Canon right now).

As I’ve said before, the thing that worries me about Canon is not so much it’s ability to maintain technical competitiveness, but its growing hubris. The high-tech graveyard is full of companies that had great products, but they became so arrogant that customers turned to other suppliers as soon as the competition began to catch up (Wang Computers is one example that comes to mind). The Canon rebate debacle and this recent MkIII pricing issue are two specific recent examples where Canon just doesn’t seem to be thinking about its image among customers. Those are specific examples, but I think Canon’s overall relationship with the customer base is weak. People like to feel good about the companies from which they buy products. When customers start to feel mistreated or unimportant, they start looking for excuses to buy from the competition. I don’t really see Canon doing much (or at least much that is effective) to maintain that “feel good” relationship with customers. That’s how market share numbers can really bite you. Market share statistics tend to look strong until they start to fall. And since you are monitoring past performance, you can already be in a big crisis before the market share numbers really start to show it.

Tom

Two things:

1. I'm not sure how Nikon is playing catch-up. For me, they are leaders in several areas; color-metering, wireless flash. The one area canon dominates is CMOS technology - but that looks to end soon.

2. It seems to me, the reason dominating public corporations fail is the impossible situation where you are expected to grow profits by 10% every year. This leads to irrational/unproductive decisions once you've reached the summit.

I would still be using Nikon equipment if not for two things - the value offered by Pentax and the fact they left me stranded with all my film equipment (lenses,etc.) by not maintaining a migration path for me.

Ed Bussa said:

The one area canon dominates is CMOS technology - but that looks to end soon.

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How's that?

While not just for CMOS technology, Canon is amongst the most active Patent receiving companies in the USA, often around the number 3 for many years already.

That has a 2-fold implication, it means fundamental science is theirs to use or sell usage rights of, and it makes it harder for competition to utilize the same technology.

The downside of that is that it makes life harder for competition, which ultimately could slow-down innovation, so more competition for Canon is a good thing for us all.

Bart

Howz that?

Well, empircally speaking, there seem to be a lot of press releases lately about others jumping on the CMOS bandwagon.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't say Canon IS NOT INNOVATING, I said their dominance in a particular technology is ending - I'm sure they still have a couple tricks up thier sleeve...

If sales are any indication, Canon appears to be doing just fine.

http://www.popphoto.com/... .../3905/top-5-digital-compacts-for-january.html

http://www.popphoto.com/... .../3904/top-5-digital-slrs-for-january.html

Roger Lambert said:

If sales are any indication, Canon appears to be doing just fine.

http://www.popphoto.com/... .../3905/top-5-digital-compacts-for-january.html

http://www.popphoto.com/... .../3904/top-5-digital-slrs-for-january.html

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The proverbial 800 lb gorilla. I doubt that they'll be pushed out of the market any time soon.

And they make pretty solid cameras at pretty competitive prices, so I don't see why they would.

I think we all know that photographers don't really need all the bells and whistles. Yes, they can be nice, but we're well beyond the point where digital cameras are missing crucial features. We can all rattle off a list of dream features that we'd love to have, but we're not hurting too much by not having them and they're probably all coming.

Kyle Nagel said:

Maybe they could find a bunch of photographers, say some that are always talking about their cameras and lenses and posting it on the internet, then they could give free promotional cameras and lenses to these photographers so they could get some exposure for their cameras...Hhmmmm...I wonder where they could find some photographers like that? ;>)

Kyle

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Gee Kyle..Dah..Let me think..Ah...My I.Q. has droped substantially since I embarked on this wonderful profession of "Fashion Photography". Could you give me a hint? (Pretend it's Patrick from Sponge Bob speaking)

Benjamin Kanarek said:

Gee Kyle..Dah..Let me think..Ah...My I.Q. has droped substantially since I embarked on this wonderful profession of "Fashion Photography". Could you give me a hint? (Pretend it's Patrick from Sponge Bob speaking)

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LOL - Gosh I was surprised it so long for someone to comment on this!

Kyle

It sounds "oxymoronic", but...

Bart_van_der_Wolf said:

The downside of that is that it makes life harder for competition, which ultimately could slow-down innovation, so more competition for Canon is a good thing for us all.

Bart

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For one thing, I am in full agreement with Canon's approach, which is nothing else that using, valuing and protecting your brain as your main and most treasured competitive weapon. I *love* this approach, in general, from an personal all the way to organizational level. Ingenuity, creativity, that ability to conceptualize and build stuff out of thin air, is what NO ONE can take away from you.

On one side, yes, macro-economics tells the competitivie/choice-range story, but, on the other hand, it is also because the PILE of cash, effort and brains invested by Canon that we have a product like the 1D Mark III (as an example, as you have others as well out-there). Canon is already years ahead of Nikon in some fronts (years means anything over 12 months), and they seem to keep pushing and pushing, even if there is no-one close enough in the rear-view mirror.

So it is hard to take a single stance here... It is kind of a different story with, say, Microsoft/Windows... I *know*, by fact, that Windows is nowhere close to be about engineering "excellence", "blistering" performance, or anything like that... it is just the product of a well-grounded competitive strategy that has pretty much dominated the landscape with a relatively unreliable, sometimes unpredictable and difficult to scale product.

I do not know what awaits for us in VISTA, for instance (that is, I am not really sure if it is better or not, if it is more stable or not, indeed). There is large contrast here, and Microsoft did have competition along the way... but the difference is that it was determined to swallow the world, in a single bite, and with a lot less patents than Canon...


Just my 0.02.