Final japanese camera market sales report (2012 vs 2011). Olympus gains, Panasonic loses.

Plenty of good news for Olympus! First we have that nice OM announcement. Second Olympus is (slowly) getting out of the financial troubles. And today we have a third good news!

BCNawards (Click here) reports that Olympus had a mirrorless camera share of 36,6% in 2012. That’s a 7,5% gain over the last year (see screenshot on top). Panasonic lost around 9%. I don’t have the data of the overall digital camera market share but as you know in Japan mirrorless cameras are now selling almost as good as DSLR cameras. You can see the full ranking list for each category here at BCN. A reason for the Olympus success could be the triple PEN introduction back in June while Panasonic did wait until November to announce the nice [shoplink 26836]Panasonic GX1[/shoplink]. I am surprised to see that Sony felt back despite the NEX-5n and NEX-7 camera release! Of course they got hit by the Thai flood but my guess is that their unappealing and lacking lens offering could be a reason for the share drop.

There is no such nice ranking in other countries. As you know I rely on the very imprecise Amazon ranking listing to check if a camera is popular or not. But we know that in Europe and USA the mirrorless market isn’t growing as fast as in Asia. But I guess it’s only a matter of time until Mirrorless will surpass the DSLR market.

Watch:
Amazon ranking in USA (Click here)
Amazon ranking in UK (Click here)
Amazon ranking in Germany (Click here)
Amazon ranking in France (Click here)