The bcnranking is compiled weeklyIn Japan it is the BCN ratings but not knowing Japanese I'm not sure if it is monthly summarised sales figures or a rolling count of some period.I would tend to agree
All you need is some sales promotion and for a short while any camera can zip up in the ratings for a while.
The Oly Pens have always managed to be in the top 10 bunch of all interchangeable lens cameras whenever I've looked. Panasonic used to be invisible in the lists but they are increasingly evident now, today a GF7 kit is at #10 just under a E-PL7 kit at #9.
Hard to summarise because it is kit orientated, that is, white E-PL7 twin lens kits in one place, silver twin kits in another, black ones elsewhere again, and then there's the single lens kits and the bodies alone all scattered throughout the rankings at times. http://bcnranking.jp/category/subcategory_0008.html
So Oly may be way down the lists in USA but they are always way up in the lists at home.
Regards..... Guy
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Has Olympus' popularity stalled?
- Thread starter cptobvious
- Start date
Honestly, I can't see much movement from m4/3 to Sony full frame. With such a decision, one would loose the benefit of a smaller sized system, since the Sony FE lenses are quite big. Why should m4/3 user drop the reason they moved away from DSLR. Also, the Sony system is too expensive for a "mass movement" to it. And it lacks the technical excellence found in Olympus m4/3 cameras (view finder, handling, ergonomics, IBIS quality, functionality).
samtheman2014
Senior Member
I am surprised to see that 8 out of the top 10 are DSLR's in what is the most successful mirrorless market in the world. As you say Guy without actual numbers the lists do not tell us very much . They do the same listing of various kits for DSLR'sIn Japan it is the BCN ratings but not knowing Japanese I'm not sure if it is monthly summarised sales figures or a rolling count of some period.I would tend to agree
All you need is some sales promotion and for a short while any camera can zip up in the ratings for a while.
The Oly Pens have always managed to be in the top 10 bunch of all interchangeable lens cameras whenever I've looked. Panasonic used to be invisible in the lists but they are increasingly evident now, today a GF7 kit is at #10 just under a E-PL7 kit at #9.
Hard to summarise because it is kit orientated, that is, white E-PL7 twin lens kits in one place, silver twin kits in another, black ones elsewhere again, and then there's the single lens kits and the bodies alone all scattered throughout the rankings at times. http://bcnranking.jp/category/subcategory_0008.html
So Oly may be way down the lists in USA but they are always way up in the lists at home.
Regards..... Guy
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Greynerd
Guest
One thing the manufacturers keep tight to their chests is how many cameras they sell.
Probably compact wise Samsung were a massive seller in the past, but outside of the enthusiast channels, so you would never have known it from this site. I am sure I have seen them as leading camera sales at some time in the past.
Possibly a good rule of thumb is the camera sales volume is inversely proportional to the chat generated about it on the specialised sites. In the same way as the power of a motor bike is inversely proportional to the decibels of sound it generates.
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samtheman2014
Senior Member
I agree DSLR's sales look to be in steady decline however mirrorless sales { all companies } are pretty static, but have not managed to match their peak year in 2012
2016 JAN-APR 903,166
2015 JAN –APR 882,907
2014 JAN-APR 963,796
2013 JAN-APR 859,218
2012 JAN-APR 1,008,306
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Greynerd
Guest
Olympus missed the boat on mirrorless when they thought that the answer to DSLR's was to produce a camera stripped of a viewfinder and every control not absolutely necessary and somehow the DSLR crowd would rush over eager to wade through a morass of menu choices on a sometimes barely visible screen instead of pushing a button.
The affordable EM10 was the result of a slow painful claw back to reality after blowing it completely at the start.
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samtheman2014
Senior Member
I know plenty folk seem happy to use the rear screen on cameras for their photography. For me no EVF or OVF no sale
--
The rose of all the world is not for me. I want for my part
Only the little white rose of Scotland
That smells sharp and sweet—and breaks the heart.
:Hugh MacDiarmid
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Greynerd
Guest
I know people like the extra portability and sometimes I do not mind but it was never going to attract the DSLR user away from his particular way of working on any scale.
I often like an EVF as often in my experience they put the worst rear screens on the cameras that need them the most. It was funny putting my Olympus XZ-1 next to the Nikon P7100 as the Nikon with the OVF had a far more visible back screen to the XZ-10 with its A(ny) M(ajor) O(overhead) L(ight) E(xtinguishes) D(isplay) state of the art screen. Samsung's screens were the same.
I always think of Olympus going back to the early compacts as the first manufacturer to drop the viewfinder and the last manufacturer to get a decent rear screen to replace it.
It is still pot luck generally with any make if the screen will disappear in bright sunlight.
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Guy Parsons
Forum Pro
With the Pens they weren't after the DSLR crowd , that's too small a market, they really were after the people coming up from compacts. But that turned into a black hole as the compact people went to smartphones.
The E-M5 was the first real Oly hit in the west because it now had a builtin viewfinder, so the DSLR people who wanted something smaller now had a camera to buy.
Now they had a line that might attract DSLR people as well as compact upgraders, if any were left.
Regards...... Guy
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Greynerd
Guest
A good point.
The EM5 was expensive when it first came out and I switched out of m43 when my f1.4 Samsung EX2f was giving better low light results than my EPL2 and EPM1 with the kit lens and fast zooms are not cheap. The original sensors were not exactly state of the art and a new 1/1.7" with an f1.4 lens was giving a good account of itself and it was cheaper to dump m43 and get a NEX 6 rather than upgrading to the EM5 at release price to get an EVF. When Olympus gave up trying to make sensors the genre was revitalised and the EM10 was the first budget EVF model, or at least budget by mirrorless standards which can be double entry level DSLR.
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If you want to own a "popular brand" then Olympus just isn't a good choice.
Buy a Canon or Nikon, if brand popularity is important to you. Olympus hasn't been a market leader for quite some time now. And even back then, it was only one of the top five brands (along with Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Pentax), and even then was probably fourth of those five.
There will always be a lot of interest in a new and revolutionary camera like the EM5. It was the first M4/3 camera with the much better 16MP Sony sensor. It was the first Olympus M4/3 camera with a built in EVF. It was among the first "retro styled" camera that started the whole trend. The EM5 spent two full years on DPR's "most popular camera" list due to all the clicks it got.
It really is hard to followup a camera like the EM5 with something even more "amazing." The EM1 was better in almost every way, but it just wasn't a breakthrough camera in the way the EM5 was.
The EM5 might have been the pivotal moment for Olympus and M4/3. After that camera, everything else was evolutionary, and not revolutionary.
While it is very hard to know precise market share, the odds are Olympus has around a 4% or 5% market share today. And remember, the pie is shrinking.
At their peak, market share was around 7% in the digital age, and around 10% in the film camera age.
People buy Olympus cameras because they are different. They tend to offer innovative features (things like IBIS, pixel mapping, and lenses designed expressly for digital), and not because they are a popular brand. They also tend to offer pretty good value, and are pretty well known for their outstanding jpeg engines.
No one else offers as many outstanding lenses that were designed for digital from the ground up. Not Canon, not Nikon, not anyone.
Olympus will probably never be the most popular brand.
The only reason the brand still exists is because their medical device division is so obscenely profitable. If it weren't for that division, Olympus cameras would now reside with Chinon, Contax, Toshiba, Agfa, Konica, Minolta, Topcon, and Praktica as a historical footnote. A fact that makes me grateful for endoscopes.
It also seems that the medical device division saved Olympus from gross fiscal mismanagement a few years ago. In business, there really is no substitute for making profits. As long as you are profitable, you can get away with almost anything.
It might be nice if Olympus was a more popular brand. At least then we could find their cameras at more retail outlets. And we wouldn't have to worry about whether their imaging division will someday be shut down, or sold off.
But in the meantime, many of us are very happy with their cameras and lenses. And all those outstanding Panasonic cameras and lenses are just icing on the cake, giving us more, and sometimes even better options.
Buy a Canon or Nikon, if brand popularity is important to you. Olympus hasn't been a market leader for quite some time now. And even back then, it was only one of the top five brands (along with Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Pentax), and even then was probably fourth of those five.
There will always be a lot of interest in a new and revolutionary camera like the EM5. It was the first M4/3 camera with the much better 16MP Sony sensor. It was the first Olympus M4/3 camera with a built in EVF. It was among the first "retro styled" camera that started the whole trend. The EM5 spent two full years on DPR's "most popular camera" list due to all the clicks it got.
It really is hard to followup a camera like the EM5 with something even more "amazing." The EM1 was better in almost every way, but it just wasn't a breakthrough camera in the way the EM5 was.
The EM5 might have been the pivotal moment for Olympus and M4/3. After that camera, everything else was evolutionary, and not revolutionary.
While it is very hard to know precise market share, the odds are Olympus has around a 4% or 5% market share today. And remember, the pie is shrinking.
At their peak, market share was around 7% in the digital age, and around 10% in the film camera age.
People buy Olympus cameras because they are different. They tend to offer innovative features (things like IBIS, pixel mapping, and lenses designed expressly for digital), and not because they are a popular brand. They also tend to offer pretty good value, and are pretty well known for their outstanding jpeg engines.
No one else offers as many outstanding lenses that were designed for digital from the ground up. Not Canon, not Nikon, not anyone.
Olympus will probably never be the most popular brand.
The only reason the brand still exists is because their medical device division is so obscenely profitable. If it weren't for that division, Olympus cameras would now reside with Chinon, Contax, Toshiba, Agfa, Konica, Minolta, Topcon, and Praktica as a historical footnote. A fact that makes me grateful for endoscopes.
It also seems that the medical device division saved Olympus from gross fiscal mismanagement a few years ago. In business, there really is no substitute for making profits. As long as you are profitable, you can get away with almost anything.
It might be nice if Olympus was a more popular brand. At least then we could find their cameras at more retail outlets. And we wouldn't have to worry about whether their imaging division will someday be shut down, or sold off.
But in the meantime, many of us are very happy with their cameras and lenses. And all those outstanding Panasonic cameras and lenses are just icing on the cake, giving us more, and sometimes even better options.
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Greynerd
Guest
And probably an enthusiasm for making cameras. I think Olympus put a little bit more than commercial expediency in to the division and we have to thank them for that.
The cold and ungracious way Samsung turned their back on their followers and walked away silently as soon as they decided there was no money in the business was a more businesslike attitude. I must say I prefer the Olympus way of doing things and thank goodness this still survives in this industry and still seems to be the case with all the current makers.
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daddyo
Forum Pro
The E-M5 was to m4/3's, what the Olympus E-1 was to 4/3's -- a classic the will be well regarded for years to come.
The E-M1 is a much better camera, but as you correctly pointed out, it was a follow up to a groundbreaking model -- a tough act to follow.
Posts like the OP are just silly. Many, if not most people on these forums seem to be like bees searching for the 'perfect' pollen -- constantly going from one flower to the next.
I have a friend who does a lot of shooting for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. -- he is still happily shooting with his old E-3, and producing outstanding work with it. Some bees understand that pollen is pollen -- so why waste the time buzzing back and forth?
The E-M1 is a much better camera, but as you correctly pointed out, it was a follow up to a groundbreaking model -- a tough act to follow.
Posts like the OP are just silly. Many, if not most people on these forums seem to be like bees searching for the 'perfect' pollen -- constantly going from one flower to the next.
I have a friend who does a lot of shooting for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. -- he is still happily shooting with his old E-3, and producing outstanding work with it. Some bees understand that pollen is pollen -- so why waste the time buzzing back and forth?
Glen Barrington
Forum Pro
You said, "People buy Olympus cameras because they are different". I believe they buy because they offer an economic choice. In my eyes, an economic choice is a difference with the addition of value being added.
I recognize I might be splitting hairs, but I think some hair is more important than other hair!
I recognize I might be splitting hairs, but I think some hair is more important than other hair!
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Greynerd
Guest
Each brand and even model offers a completely different style in their approach to producing an image making machine and that would seem more important to me than value added.
Glen Barrington
Forum Pro
That style and approach IS value in my eyes! Finding a camera that seems to work WITH you in realizing you vision instead of against you, is a bit of a treasure!
gary0319
Forum Pro
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Greynerd
Guest
I see, usability value rather than economic value. It is difficult to quantify as having a Fuji X-T10 and an EM5 I myself it is impossible to say which is a better camera as they are such different things working so well in their own particular ways.
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Greynerd
Guest
In a world where if the manufacturer walks away from the business because he is not selling you are with a system camera left a bit high and dry. Look at the Samsung forum and see if that will be OK with you.
The viability of the system very much depends on the popularity of the cameras.
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