The Canon EOS M50 leads mirrorless camera sales in Japan for March 2019

[afolickman]

I don't see any Nikon in that group.

 

[Photo Hack]

Good analysis. Still, it's just basic math that a $1,998 has a better per-unit margin in dollars than a $629 one, since most manufacturers set margins to be a percentage rather than a number. Even if one averages prices in the roughest way possible, Canon's is $539, whereas Sony's is $935,50, which leads to a considerably higher revenue for the latter.
And then, there's the boatloads of money Sony save with their laser-focused advertising through YT, and body and part recycling - designs like the A6400 and A7M3 were paid off years ago with their predecessors.
If I worked in Canon HQ, I wouldn't be happy - Sony are obviously more competitive in mirrorless than they ever were in DSLRs, and as the global camera market shifts more and more towards the former, Sony will make big inroads in market share.

Still all speculation. I can do that too, it’s not uncommon for a manufacturer to produce a product that loses money for the purpose of gaining market share, boosting their reputation, compete in other areas, R&D for other products, or loads of other reasons. It often requires sales over time to really see profit anyways. Just like launching any new product or business.

I worked in automotive and other industrial markets and you would be surprised what big companies do to their profit margins.

You think a lot of the hybrids and electric cars were profitable? Supercars and sports cars? Business is a lot more complicated than most would think and individual product line profit margins don’t live in a vacuum or guarantee a return of profit at launch time or even the first year. There are way too many variables and metrics to make arbitrary assumptions based on the data shown.

And yeah it doesn’t escape me that this websites purpose is to speculate and report rumors haha.

 

[neuroanatomist]

Still, it's just basic math that a $1,998 has a better per-unit margin in dollars than a $629 one, since most manufacturers set margins to be a percentage rather than a number.

Ahh, so like @transpo1 you also know the exact margins for all of the relevant products. Perhaps you can share the values that underlie your 'basic math'. Is a 'loss leader' part of your basic math? How does ROI factor into margin setting? Economies of distribution channels? More basic math. No doubt you've accounted for all of those.

If I worked in Canon HQ, I wouldn't be happy - Sony are obviously more competitive in mirrorless than they ever were in DSLRs, and as the global camera market shifts more and more towards the former, Sony will make big inroads in market share.

Sony abandoned DSLRs because they could not compete with Canon and Nikon. They shifted to a APS-C MILCS, a market segment where the two big players were not active, so of course they were 'more competitive' – that's easy when you're the only game in town. Then Canon entered the APS-C MILC market, and Sony added FF MILCs, again an area where Canon was not active...and again Sony was more competitive than...well, Leica also made FF MILCs LOL. Now, Canon is #1 in APS-C MILCs and has launched two FF MILCs. Sony is running out of market segments.

 

[Ozarker]

Ahh, so like @transpo1 you also know the exact margins for all of the relevant products. Perhaps you can share the values that underlie your 'basic math'. Is a 'loss leader' part of your basic math? How does ROI factor into margin setting? Economies of distribution channels? More basic math. No doubt you've accounted for all of those.


Sony abandoned DSLRs because they could not compete with Canon and Nikon. They shifted to a APS-C MILCS, a market segment where the two big players were not active, so of course they were 'more competitive' – that's easy when you're the only game in town. Then Canon entered the APS-C MILC market, and Sony added FF MILCs, again an area where Canon was not active...and again Sony was more competitive than...well, Leica also made FF MILCs LOL. Now, Canon is #1 in APS-C MILCs and has launched two FF MILCs. Sony is running out of market segments.

Yeah, but just wait until Sony launches cameraless lenses.

 

[bhf3737]

Yes, this is a great point. Sony has more profit on that list. Canon's profit margin can't be that much on the M50.

Interesting. So now the super pro movie producer for Netflix who is also a genius market analyst,
has revealed that he/she is an economist and data analytics expert, too, and his/her brilliant mind finds
facts about profitability from unit sales data!! Surely his/her next stop will be NASA or somewhere close by.

 

[neuroanatomist]

Yeah, but just wait until Sony launches cameraless lenses.

They did...and they were a commercial flop.

 

[Quarkcharmed]

Sony is running out of market segments.

That'd be very sad. I'm happy, in general, that Canon performs well. But as a user, I don't really care if M50 is #1 as I'm not buying it. As a consumer, I want to see competition on the market. I don't want to see Sony falling off the market. I want Sony to produce a very successful A7rIV (sometime this year hopefully) so that Canon tries to match it in their 5DIV-5DSr-successor. And if they don't match it, at least I have a choice, so it's me who benefits from this competition.

 

[Sharlin]

I don't see any Nikon in that group.

Well, the reason is obvious. Nikon doesn't have any MILCs that would make it to the top-10 on a list like this. That is to say, crop sensor ones.

 

[Sharlin]

wow ... Canon 1-st place! ... and?!
Lets see this in another way:
Canon has an amount of 650$ in that list.
Sony has an amount of 4150$ and thats more than 6 times than Canon. But hey, Canon is first, is it?!
For "real" photographers these lists must be the benchmark.

That math is ridiculous. Based on the numbers, Canon sells five M50's for every a73.

 

[jeffa4444]

So Canon 27% of top 10 sales, Sony 25.3% and Olympus 19%. These are just one month figures but include some older cameras which is interesting as the Japanese used to like to purchase the latest hardware.
I bet these three are not repeated in that order globally as Fuji seems to do better than Olympus in Europe as does Nikon.
No doubt that the Canon RP will break into the top 10 but value zoom lenses are currently not in the RF lens series so adaptors are order of the day which is not ideal especially on a camera that has a small form factor.

 

[mb66energy]

Sold units per company:
Canon: 29.0 %
Sony: 25.3 %
Olympus: 19.1 %

About the hypothesis that Sony makes more money by selling pricier cameras: Maybe that's right but in the 1990 there was a tale that Canon's high end systems were sold by a 0% profit margin (e.g. 2.8 300 lenses in white) while they made a lot of money with point and shoot cameras. And the most important base for profit has bin the office sector.

I do not see any big difference in numbers of sold units nor net profit and the fact that Canon has only two different bodies in the race might be a hint that their profit per unit is good or very good: Scale of economics might work here excellently.

 

[jayphotoworks]

It's not that surprising if you've used one

I've not only used one, I have one in my kit complete with battle scars..

 

[jayphotoworks]

They did...and they were a commercial flop.

Sony has had a track record of flops/failures in the past. Look at memory sticks, betamax, aibo, minidisc, sony ericsson and mobile in general, DAT, ATRAC.. I think Blu-Ray was the only format that stuck (and Toshiba lost). Sony seems to enjoy pushing consumer electronics in uncharted territory and trying new things. But to give them credit at the very least, the creation of their semiconductor division has really advanced mobile imaging and sensors in the last few years and their persistent efforts amidst interim failures/confusion (A mount, E mount, FE mount confusion) in their camera division has been quite the media darling and either intentionally or unintentionally helped shape some of the way the industry moves. I, for one never expected Sony ever to have an AF system on par or possibly excel some of its peers.

 

[fentiger]

Actuarilly, my children, & grandchildren will use my 1DX, 5IV, and M6, plus a boatload of L lens as ballast to bury my ashes in the Hudson. In the meantime, Canon is Saturday Night live for me as my skills try to improve, eh?

why? do they all use sony?

 

[PerKr]

why? do they all use sony?

they're probably just super annoyed he's constantly taking their picture ;-)

 

[Kit.]

I, for one never expected Sony ever to have an AF system on par or possibly excel some of its peers.

Why? Was Minolta that bad in AF?

 

[Architect1776]

You might think that, but you don't know. Higher price doesn't necessarily mean higher profit margin.

it could also be a loss leader.
The M series are very likely high in margin and % means nothing vs units sold.

 

[rrcphoto]

Good analysis. Still, it's just basic math that a $1,998 has a better per-unit margin in dollars than a $629 one, since most manufacturers set margins to be a percentage rather than a number.

hard to say actually considering I do believe that Canon has more factory automation, and a huge economies of scale with the parts in the M50.

so it's not basic math because you're not comparing apples to oranges.

 

[neuroanatomist]

I DID find this--weekly rankings of top 50, though this counts kits and bodies as separate items. Without the sales numbers it's hard to judge but there a lot of Canons on this list.... https://www.bcnretail.com/research/ranking/list/contents_type=41

There’s a monthly tab as well.

 

[criscokkat]

It speaks well of how solid the Sony A7III is that it's still on the top 10 list this long after it was released. The Canon R is not on the list, although it looks like the RP will be by next month. I suspect Sony has had a bit of a bump with all of the coverage of the (now released, but as of last month promised) firmware release of their improved eye tracking software. By all accounts it's a remarkable piece of software, and with the newer versions of the metabones adapter it makes Canon adapted lenses work with very few caveats.

The newer G series lenses are catching up with canon's ef lenses in quality in some of the lenses released within the last 6 months. I suspect the R lens quality will be another step ahead, as far as autofocus and speed are concerned.

Still, Canon has every reason to be concerned. Canon has a long tail with the amount of ef lenses and momentum in the market. But if they can't deliver more influencers will move to Sony or Nikon, which will start a slow slide. I suspect if that happens it will help Nikon way more than sony (and possibly the L mount alliance cameras). I am 90% sure canon will be able to deliver, but I'm not 100% any longer.