Olympus abdicating entry level ILS market?

Impulses wrote:

I find it odd that EOS M is actually gaining ground and Nikon 1 is losing it... I know it's totally unrelated to the main M4/3 vs Alpha conversation but still. Did Japan have the same EOS M fire sales the US did last year? I guess that would contribute to it...

Kinda amusing the two mirrorless systems with the least amount of new lenses were the one experiencing the most growth. Dunno if that says something about the typical mirrorless buyer in Japan or it just traces back directly to the big sales.

The article posted this time last year in in m43blogspot.com (thanks 007Peter) that  included the chart sheds some light on where things stood then:

"Micro Four Thirds is seeing more competition, and the total market share is shrinking from 50% to 37% (top 20 camera models only). Still, Micro Four Thirds still amount for the largest market share, and the largest number of cameras on the top 20 list (nine).

Among Micro Four Thirds, Olympus is selling twice as many camera units as Panasonic, and it is the E-PL series which is the most popular. With Panasonic, the GF series sells the most in Japan.

The Sony NEX system is one of the successful systems competing against Micro Four Thirds.

The big surprise is that the Canon EOS M camera is selling so well. In my opinion, the camera has nothing to offer: It only has the fixed LCD as the viewing option, no EVF. And the autofocus is horribly slow. Further, there are next to no lenses available. The reason why the camera is still selling well is probably that the Canon brand name has a big value, and that the Canon EOS M has been selling at deep discounts.

The Nikon 1 system is not doing well. I find that a bit strange: I think Nikon has done well with their mirrorless system. They have made an electronic shutter with a fast readout rate, usable also for flash photography. This is much better than the Panasonic cameras, which have a horribly slow E-shutter. And the Nikon 1 cameras use PDAF for very accurate autofocus, also with moving subjects. Further, the cameras can take bursts of pictures at 60fps at full image quality, very impressive.

Samsung is still flexing its muscles, and just launched their GH3-killer, the NX30. So even if Samsung have not made a huge impression on the market so far, they still have far from given up.

In the future, for the 2014 list, I would expect to find the Lumix GM1 high on the list. It appears to have everything the Japan camera market wants: Sleek design, compact size."

http://m43photo.blogspot.com/search?q=+BCN

Based on this, Olympus was selling slightly better than Sony in mirrorless this time last year, and Panasonic was about tied with Canon at half the numbers of either Sony or Olympus.

Meanwhile, m43blogspot.com notes later in the same article that when compared to DSLR's,

So mirrorless was closing in on Nikon DSLR sales last year at this time. Keep in mind, these are last year's numbers published on Jan. 1, 2014; new numbers for the past year should come out in a few weeks.