Thursday 8 September 2011

Canon Hanging on to Mirrors Means Opportunity for Sony, Panasonic Cameras

Read this articles from Bloomberg website today, and also see the quote: "As a result, Canon and Nikon’s combined share of the Japanese market has fallen by 35 percent, while Sony’s share has doubled, according to estimates at research firm BCN Inc.", this tally again with the market data that i posted earlier on. Even though Sony is not using MFT standard for their camera, but they actually engage the mirrorless design in the NEX system, so i guess the NEX system is quite a success in Sony.


A photo Taken in My Sweet Home with Lumix G1 and Canon FD 50mm F1.4 under warmth morning shine


The difficulties that i think Canon and Nikon is facing are :
  1. If they adopt a new mirrorless design, are they going to use APS-C sensor or smaller sensor size? (This is going to affect the current lenses design, ain't?)
  2. Is their previous range of lenses design to be able to support their new system? As to achieve small in size for the Mirrorless Interchangeable Lenses (MIL) system, normal current practice is contrast detection instead of phase detection. Lesson learn from the recent new products from Olympus and Panasonic is that in order to speed up the focus speed, they improve a lot of their design in the new lenses. If Canon have to roll out a new series of lenses, that means that they have 2 different interchangeable system to support, that is going to add some complexity to the business strategy. Dilemma in strategic planning to continue support legacy products and new products based on different technologies ....

. I think it's time for Canon and Nikon to think a new business strategy to enter into the new Mirrorless Interchangeable Market to prevent any regret in the future.

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