At 12:08 AM +0000 1/4/04, olympus-digest wrote:
>Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 15:39:34 -0500
>From: "B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: [OM] US Sales of digital cameras in 2003 Q3
>
>What I'd like to know is what the position of each of these companies
>was five years ago, re film camera sales. My guess is that based on
>that, the two big winners would be Sony and HP - which weren't players
>at all - and the BIG loser would be Kodak.
My recollection is that Kodak didn't really sell many film cameras five years
ago. Kodak preferred to sell film, chemistry, and processing machines. I
don't think Sony ever sold film cameras.
>- -----Original Message-----
>From: owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>[mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Piers Hemy
>Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2004 3:23 PM
>To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Re: [OM] US Sales of digital cameras in 2003 Q3
>
>
>Interesting, Joe (interesting also that you read Economist, my hat off
>to you!).
Thanks. In addition to the usual flood of technical journals, I also read The
Wall Steet Journal. Does this help or hurt?
>But I think your conclusion misses something hidden in the data, which
>is that Can*n, K*dak and HP are gaining market share while F*ji, S*ny
>and Olympus are losing market share.
Yes, but it's easier for someone with a small market share to generate a large
percentage increase than for a market leader to do the same. At the top, it's
almost a zero-sum game (even as that market grows at ~40% a year), as people
aren't going to buy more digital cameras in total except insofar as general
improvements in price and technology cause the market to expand, so each
relative increase is at the expense of someone else. The default is that
relative market shares remain the same even as the total number of cameras sold
changes.
That said, companies that have growth less that that of the overall market will
see their market share shrink, if the period of low growth endures. (Quarterly
stats are too noisy to draw too large a conclusion.)
As for Olympus, being #4 by volume, bracketed by Canon and Nikon, means that
Olympus won't disappear so quickly; it would take years of major blunders to
become like FujiFilm. The stuff we have been complaining about in prior
debates may or may not be mistakes, but none are blunders sufficient to make
any detectable difference at this level.
I would bet that Kodak is taking sales mostly from Sony, mainly because I have
read in the business press many stories about the problems at Sony, but few to
no stories about any such problems at Canon, Olympus, Nikon, et al. Sony the
organization seems to have lost their way. I hope they find themselves very
soon; in their heyday, Sony products were noticably better than competing
products.
Joe Gwinn
>- -----Original Message-----
>From: owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>[mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
>On Behalf Of Joe Gwinn
>Sent: 03 January 2004 17:09
>To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [OM] US Sales of digital cameras in 2003 Q3
>
>On page 46 of the 3 January 2003 issue of The Economist there appears an
>article titled "Has Kodak missed the moment?". Basically, the article
>says that film is dying faster than Kodak expected, with the usual
>back-and-forth on the future of Kodak and photography. Kodak is buying
>and developing all manner of digital imaging businesses, but I think
>that it's far too soon to tell if they will pull off the transition away
>from silver. At least they are trying.
>
>Anyway, for me the most interesting thing in the article was a table
>giving sales of digital camera in the US for the fourth quarter of 2003,
>broken out by company:
>
>Name Units MktShare Growth from '02Q3
>Sony 800k 22.4% 11.1%
>Kodak 625k 17.5% 66.7%
>Canon 550K 15.4% 83.3%
>Olympus 414k 11.6% 13.8%
>Nikon 340k 9.5% 58.1%
>FujiFilm 270k 7.5% -3.6%
>HP 245k 6.8% 113.0%
>Other 334k 9.3% -85.6%
>
>Total 3,578k 100% 39.2%
>
>So, in 3Q 2003, a total of 3.578 million digital cameras were sold in
>the US, or about 14 million a year, and the overall digital camera
>market is growing by about 40% per year. Kodak is the real comer, but
>Olympus isn't doing so badly.
>
>Joe Gwinn
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