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

[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.

 

[QuisUtDeus]

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.

By "influencers" do you mean "Youtube personalities"? If so, I think you (and they) vastly overestimate their importance. Youtubers and other social media "influencers" have heavy influence on a tiny slice of the population, which causes those in that bubble to extrapolate wildly. Pro sports shooters aren't going to switch systems because a teenager on Youtube said 4k is critical.

 

[neuroanatomist]

By "influencers" do you mean "Youtube personalities"? If so, I think you (and they) vastly overestimate their importance. Youtubers and other social media "influencers" have heavy influence on a tiny slice of the population, which causes those in that bubble to extrapolate wildly. Pro sports shooters aren't going to switch systems because a teenager on Youtube said 4k is critical.

Yeah, the ‘influencers’ at DPR have been beating the anti-Canon DRum for years. Only Rishi and a few forumites seem to care.

 

[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. 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.

I Got bored so i decided to go back and do some REAL MATH on this.

let's assume every % point is 1 unit for the sake of this illustration. Going by amazon japan current yen prices and we will assume that both units get 10% margins (which was your supposition)

M50 - 64,050 Yen x 18.2 units = 1,165,710 and profit: 116,571
A7 III - 221,000 Yen x 3.5 units = 773,500 and profit 77,350

So going by some basic math seems like Canon's making more profit on the M50's than Sony is on the A7 III's at least in Japan.

Both the M50 and the A7 III's are sold with different kit options,etc as well, for the sake of this I just cancelled all that out as equal.

 

[Dantana]

I Got bored so i decided to go back and do some REAL MATH on this.

let's assume every % point is 1 unit for the sake of this illustration. Going by amazon japan current yen prices and we will assume that both units get 10% margins (which was your supposition)

M50 - 64,050 Yen x 18.2 units = 1,165,710 and profit: 116,571
A7 III - 221,000 Yen x 3.5 units = 773,500 and profit 77,350

So going by some basic math seems like Canon's making more profit on the M50's than Sony is on the A7 III's at least in Japan.

Both the M50 and the A7 III's are sold with different kit options,etc as well, for the sake of this I just cancelled all that out as equal.

Seems like you are assuming an awful lot.

 

[criscokkat]

Yeah, the ‘influencers’ at DPR have been beating the anti-Canon DRum for years. Only Rishi and a few forumites seem to care.

At some point the amount of youtubers, instagramers and the like may be enough to tip the system for sub-$1000 kits, but that would take some serious pushes by Sony to push into that market with many more places than just Best Buy. Best Buy is about the only place I've ever seen Sony in any of the big box stores, and I believe the reason why is that returns are taken back by Canon and Nikon, refurbished and sold on their sites or elsewhere. Sony handles it the same way any other Sony product return is handled, at the store level. Which is part of the reason why Sony isn't seen sitting on the shelves of Walmart.

But more importantly is influencers on the professional side. There are a few pros out there using Sonys but not many. All things more or less equal a pro will choose the tool that works more reliably for their needs, and ignore the one that may be slightly better in some category. But if one of those tools is SIGNIFICANTLY better, they will switch in a heartbeat. Eye focus might just be a gimmick that works better under ideal conditions but it's not that far off from working under extreme conditions as the sony native glass and software improve. What if they took the lessons learned from eye focus and adapted it to other objects? What if they had an option to recognize a football/soccer ball/basketball sailing through the air and had the ability to set focus and focus depth on the ball and the nearest player automatically? That's something that takes a lot of computational horsepower, but it's not out of the range of possibilities. 5 years ago I would have guessed the current level of eye focus a lot further off than it is now.

If the infuencer that is a competitor starts getting better shots quicker and more reliably, people will switch really really fast.

 

[CanonFanBoy]

What if they took the lessons learned from eye focus and adapted it to other objects? What if they had an option to recognize a football/soccer ball/basketball sailing through the air and had the ability to set focus and focus depth on the ball and the nearest player automatically? That's something that takes a lot of computational horsepower, but it's not out of the range of possibilities. 5 years ago I would have guessed the current level of eye focus a lot further off than it is now.

If the infuencer that is a competitor starts getting better shots quicker and more reliably, people will switch really really fast.

Actually, it simply takes setting the depth of field correctly and being in the right place at the right time. Now I'm an influencer. (Why is it I get the feeling that some hope the mode dial is eliminated and "Pro" cameras just do it all in green mode (including mind reading)? Wanna be "Pros" that need a camera to compensate for their incompetence?

 

[QuisUtDeus]

Seems like you are assuming an awful lot.

Feel free to correct those assumptions and post your own calculations. If you have more information on how much profit Canon makes on an M50 and Sony makes on an A7iii, cite it. Otherwise, you're just complaining about assumptions you don't like (which are really just assuming a flat margin for everything, and showing that Canon moves more currency than Sony on this table).

 

[Dantana]

Feel free to correct those assumptions and post your own calculations. If you have more information on how much profit Canon makes on an M50 and Sony makes on an A7iii, cite it. Otherwise, you're just complaining about assumptions you don't like (which are really just assuming a flat margin for everything, and showing that Canon moves more currency than Sony on this table).

I'm not complaining about anything. I'm pointing out that there are a lot of assumptions in that statement. Without them, there is not much of a statement at all. We don't know the margin of profit on any of these cameras. They could be selling them at a loss to make it up on lenses. There could be a huge profit on one of them and a very small one on the others. There could be any number of factors involved. If you have actual data for that, great.

 

[FramerMCB]

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.

First person to Mars? After they help Space-X get around the final hurdles to get there of course... (this is all very tongue-in-cheek, or, "good-fun" as some might say)

 

[FramerMCB]

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.

That may be, but at least some retailers are still selling the RP as a bundle with the basic Canon EF adapter... But your point about size/form-factor is spot-on. I wonder if Canon will make a smallish RF "affordable" zoom, something like the EF-M 11-22mm???

 

[FramerMCB]

The next list I want to see is... Which cameras/camera systems are used/preferred in SPACE? I think, don't quote me, that many of the Apollo missi Likeons used Hasselblads. I think they were shooting for optimum image quality combined with a system with a reputation for robustness. However, it may have been manufacturers vi-eying to supply "cameras in space".
Let me correct/add-to my own post - "in the 60's NASA was looking for a more compact system to replace the bulkier Hasselblad systems..." (paraphrasing) looks like Nikon is the clear and undisputed winner here - including one of the first digital cameras a converted Nikon F4. There is a pretty cool image from the ISS embedded in the following webpage:

From Apollo to the ISS: A Short History of Nikon’s NASA Cameras

NASA and Nikon—a decade-old relationship.

www.reviewed.com

https://reviewed-com-res.cloudinary.com/image/fetch/s--8JpARIOL--/b_white,c_limit,cs_srgb,f_auto,fl_progressive.strip_profile,g_center,q_auto,w_642/https://reviewed-production.s3.amazonaws.com/attachment/2e2a614a35e0121fbac461598296089c4b3e0f8f/iss031e112469.jpg

 

[Dantana]

The next list I want to see is... Which cameras/camera systems are used/preferred in SPACE? I think, don't quote me, that many of the Apollo missi View attachment 183911 Likeons used Hasselblads. I think they were shooting for optimum image quality combined with a system with a reputation for robustness. However, it may have been manufacturers vi-eying to supply "cameras in space".
Let me correct/add-to my own post - "in the 60's NASA was looking for a more compact system to replace the bulkier Hasselblad systems..." (paraphrasing) looks like Nikon is the clear and undisputed winner here - including one of the first digital cameras a converted Nikon F4. There is a pretty cool image from the ISS embedded in the following webpage:

From Apollo to the ISS: A Short History of Nikon’s NASA Cameras

NASA and Nikon—a decade-old relationship.

www.reviewed.com

https://reviewed-com-res.cloudinary.com/image/fetch/s--8JpARIOL--/b_white,c_limit,cs_srgb,f_auto,fl_progressive.strip_profile,g_center,q_auto,w_642/https://reviewed-production.s3.amazonaws.com/attachment/2e2a614a35e0121fbac461598296089c4b3e0f8f/iss031e112469.jpg

But you were right about the Hasselblads on the Apollo missions:
https://www.history.nasa.gov/apollo_photo.html

 

[BillB]

But you were right about the Hasselblads on the Apollo missions:
https://www.history.nasa.gov/apollo_photo.html

I think the removable backs had something to do with the Hasselblad decision, along with film size.

 

[BillB]

That may be, but at least some retailers are still selling the RP as a bundle with the basic Canon EF adapter... But your point about size/form-factor is spot-on. I wonder if Canon will make a smallish RF "affordable" zoom, something like the EF-M 11-22mm???

Canon may think there will be a lot of demand for the RF 24-105 zoom. They have sure sold a lot of the EF 24-105 zooms over the years.

 

[stevelee]

I’m reminded of the car dealership ad that said, “We lose money on every sale, but we make up for it with volume.”

I sometimes tell that to describe my singing.

 

[rrcphoto]

Seems like you are assuming an awful lot.

didn't assume anything. chose 10% because the original post assumed the margins were the same. and for simplicity used 1 unit = 1%

 

[scyrene]

It’s a very handy size but seems like a system without a future.

I'd guess that the vast majority of customers don't care about the future of the system, they just pick the camera that appears to suit their needs at the right price.

 

[lightthief]

Yeah, but just wait until Sony launches cameraless lenses.

Too late:

Linsen mit Spätzle – Wikipedia

de.wikipedia.org

Okay, the joke works only in german language :-(