Sony may control about 15 percent of the global market for single-lens-reflex cameras by the end of March, Masashi Imamura, president of the Personal Imaging & Sound Business Group told Bloomberg in an interview in Tokyo yesterday.
Interchangeable lens cameras is the fastest growing segment of digital imaging devices last year. Sales of SLR cameras increased 30% in the past year, more than twice the 13% growth by compact cameras, according to the Camera & Imaging Products Association, a Tokyo-based industry group.
In a report from research company IDC in April last year, leading the race was Canon which sold 45% of the world’s SLR cameras, followed by Nikon which sold 34%. Sony was in third place, accounting for 11% of the 9.77 million units sold in 2009. In the previous four years that it has been in the segment, Sony has garnered about 10% of the market share.
It bought the high-end camera business of Konica Minolta Holdings in 2006 when Konica ended its 130-year-old camera business to focus on printers.
Sony, which also manufactures the Cyber-shot compact cameras, has been aggressively introducing new models in its pursuit to grab market share from the two leaders.
The maker of alpha-series DSLR cameras introduced its NEX cameras (NEX-3 and NEX-5) in June 2010. These cameras feature the large sensors of traditional DSLRs, do away with the use of the reflex mirror and optical viewfinder, while allowing the camera lens to be changeable.
Like the Micro Four Thirds mirrorless cameras from Olympus and Panasonic, the NEX cameras offer the image quality of traditional DSLRs, the flexibility of using different lens for different shooting situations, yet enjoy a reduced bulk.
Sony also launched a slew of new models in its existing Alpha line in September. These include the SLT A55 and A33, which replace the traditional reflex mirror between the lens and the sensor with a stationary translucent mirror. This also makes the camera smaller and improves the auto-focus performance of the camera.
If you plot the numbers on a graph, you’ll get a standard U-shaped curve (upside down in this instance) governed by the above quardratic equation.
