Christmas sales winner at Amazon: DSLR still beats Mirrorless.

November 30, 2011
deals
70 Comments

Christmas time is also the “business time” for all camera manufacturers. There are plenty of deals, rebates, bundles on offer in worldwide stores. There is no exact way to see yet which camera and lens is selling better than others. We can only get a vague idea by looking at the worldwide Amazon rankings. So let’s check how Panasonic and Olympus are doing:

USA
The United States are probably the most conservative market on the world. Mirrorless had not the same success as in Asia or Europe. When you loo at the full DSLR+Mirrorless+compact camera ranking (Click here) you will see only Canon and Nikon DSLR cameras on top. You have to switch over at the Mirrorless camera/lens ranking (Click here) to see what is popular. The most sold lens is the Panasonic 20mm pancake (no surprise). But when it comes to the cameras Sony and Nikon are outselling the m43 alternatives. No good news here for Panasonic and Olympus. But I guess the reason for that is the poor marketing. An example? The GX1 will be in Stock only AFTER the Christmas sales time. Not really a smart move from Pana.

UK
Same story as in the US. People buys DSLR cameras or compact cameras and not very often Mirrorless Click here to see the rankings. When watching the pure mirrorless rankings (Click here) you see that Panasonic is the real king of that market. Close behind you find Sony and then Nikon.

GERMANY
What’s going on in Germany? No surprise, DSLR and compact cameras are ruling the world (Click here). Nikon, Canon, Nikon , Canon all the way! But again Panasonic is the king of the mirrorless rankings (Click here).

FRANCE
You would expect France to be different than Germany or UK buyers or not? No way. Nikon-Canon dominates the french market too (Click here to see the ranking). And when it comes to mirrorles (Click here) than Sony is playing the major role in France.

JAPAN
The only real market that has fully accepted the Mirrorless philosophy is Japan. Watch the full Mirrorless+DSLR ranking (Click here) and you will notice a strong fight between all manufacturers with Olympus and Panasonic cameras challenging the big two (Canon and Nikon).

I absolutely think that Mirrorless is the future but what this sales do show is that Olympus and Panasonic have a lot of homework to do in order to challenge the Canon-Nikon DSLR market. And I guess the real weak point for both is the marketing strategy. A wonder how these rankings will look in one year when we will have Canon and Fuji pushing their Mirrorless systems.