JMD-70
Senior Member
That's prolly 99 to 100 more units than other Nikon outlets!
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What is keeping Nikon from satisfying Z9 Demand?
- Thread starter vbuhay
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tdwesbo
Senior Member
All of the above, AND power shortages in overseas factories, a shortage of modular shipping containers, higher fuel prices, labor shortages in production and supply chain, etc……. Everything is awful right now for Z9 bodies, F250 pickup trucks, XBOX series x consoles, etc.
Laslo Varadi
Veteran Member
Supply seems to be always limited for these items. A1, D850, Nikon 500pf to name a few. I have always received my item the same day or within a week of introduction into the supply chain.
I never ordered from B&H or Adorama. Too many orders for the to fulfill.
Placed pre-order from smaller brick an mortar camera store, where they know me from previous transactions. They never ask for my credit card and call me as soon as my order is available for pick-up.
Relationships matter. YMMV, but that’s how I roll.
I never ordered from B&H or Adorama. Too many orders for the to fulfill.
Placed pre-order from smaller brick an mortar camera store, where they know me from previous transactions. They never ask for my credit card and call me as soon as my order is available for pick-up.
Relationships matter. YMMV, but that’s how I roll.
If your reply was a steak, I’d say it was well done.
briantilley
Veteran Member
Just to be clear - Grays told me that the whole of the UK received no more than 100 units in the initial shipment. Grays' own share was in single figures, I understand.
Dry and chewy?
ericbowles
Senior Member
Your expectations of Nikon and B&H are completely unrealistic. The first day pre-orders for this camera exceeded all expectations. One medium sized shop on the west coast had 200 Z-9 pre-orders in the first two hours. This is a very good camera and was heavily promoted. There are a lot of professionals and enthusiasts who have experience trying the Z6/Z7 versions with an understanding of the value of a flagship level Z camera.
Nikon's best selling flagship camera ever was the D3 with a little over 100,000 units sold in almost 3 years. Production of flagship level cameras is limited. They moved production to Thailand over a year ago because manufacturing capacity is more flexible and there is more capacity, but it's not unlimited. To increase capacity you need to increase supply from every part of the supply chain - every component, shippers, labor, plant, etc. There is a cost and it needs to be sustained for a couple of years to recoup that cost. What's more, capacity increases and changes take months of time.
B&H has no way to predict what their share will be of Nikon's global manufacturing capacity. They can estimate based on their experience with other top selling gear, but they have no incentive at all to tell you it's going to be a really long time so you maintain your order and place another order elsewhere. They know they will have cancellations, but they want to fill as many orders as possible.
Don't expect NPS application to bail you out. Nikon is getting a lot more applications for NPS now and many are not qualified. Nikon is having to look closer and screen applicants - and some will be rejected incorrectly. The way to resolve this was to apply 6 months ago before the Z9 was announced. I have a friend who did exactly that and they have their Z9 in hand.
Ryan Steel
Well-known member
They're busy working on the 60-80MP Z8 (D850 replacement), which will likely ship in volume before most people get their Z9s... and everyone's underwear is going to be in a bunch, including all the people here who will reply to this post saying it's not true... we shall see in 12 months.
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peripheralfocus
Veteran Member
I know I'm like a broken record on this, and, Eric, your comments are almost always smart and on-point, but can we please, please, please stop citing absolute numbers based on that serial number database, which has been shown again and again to be woefully inadequate for determining sales numbers. It can't be used this way. Full stop. Cannot.
Nikon almost certainly sold quite a bit more than 100,000 D3 cameras; the serial number database obviously undercounts sales in almost all cases, and sometimes drastically. A cursory glance at the figures shows this. Unfortunately, how much it undercounts is not predictable in any way.
And just for the record on flagship cameras, the D3 was not anywhere near Nikon's biggest seller. Nikon sold over 800,000 units of both the F3 and the F2. Those are reliable numbers because they come from Nikon itself directly; they provided them to authors of books on Nikon history.
briantilley
Veteran Member
Until we have a better resource available to us, I'm going to keep using that one - with the usual caveats.
peripheralfocus
Veteran Member
The lack of a better source does not make a bad source acceptable. If you need medical advice and the only person in the room is a carpenter, you gonna' go with his diagnosis and treatment plan?
And what kind of caveat are you going to append when you use this "resource"?
"According to the almost certainly very inaccurate figures derived from the serial number database, Nikon sold X number of X cameras."
That would be the appropriate caveat, but people would rightly ask why they should pay any attention at all to whatever you're saying. And because everyone knows that nobody would pay attention to figures provided with that correct caveat, nobody ever gives that correct caveat. Instead, they say, "Nikon sold X number of cameras, and that proves ... blah, blah, blah", as if the number was a known fact.
We have a huge problem in this world with lack of critical thinking. Obviously, camera sales are not life-or-death (as, say, medical misinformation can be), but nonsense is nonsense.
Except in a tiny number of cases where Nikon has revealed exact sales numbers, we have no accurate public information about individual Nikon product sales. It doesn't exist. The facts, or even reliable estimates, are not known. We just need to live with that.
vbuhay
Veteran Member
shuncheung
Veteran Member
The D3 was in production closer to two years than three years. The D3 was announced on August 23, 2007 and Nikon started shipping them at the end of November. Nikon announced the D3s in October 2009 but started shipping them much quicker. My wife's birthday is in early January and I took pictures in her birthday party in 2010 with a D3s on loan from Nikon. It reminds me that her birthday is coming up again soon.
Unless you can present more reliable numbers, 100K D3 is probably close enough. Initially Nikon was producing 8K D3 a month and due to high demand, they increased to 9K a month. Those numbers came from Nikon themselves. I would assume the D3 sales was skewed towards the early part of the production cycle and it had to slow down after 6 months to a year. By mid 2008, I was all set to buy a D3 but Nikon suddenly announced the D700, and I switched to the D700.
For the D3, Nikon only had one sequence of serial numbers for their world-wide distribution. Hence it is much easier to estimate the overall production than current models which use different sequences for different regions.
During the times of the F2 and F3, Nikon was far ahead as the #1 pro brand, and the F2 was in production from 1971 to 1980 (with various viewfinder and metering variations, including the transition into AI in 1977), when it was replaced by the F3, which was in production all the way to 2001, after the F4, F5 and even D1 had all been introduced.
peripheralfocus
Veteran Member
There is no magic that turns a bad estimate into a good one, just because it's the only estimate available. If we're standing on a bridge, and I tell you that, in my opinion as a random dude with no engineering or medical training, there's a 90% chance you'll survive if you jump off, and you say, "I'd actually like a more knowledgeable estimate," how do you feel when I say, "well, since you only have my estimate, it's probably close enough."
Is my estimate better because it's the only one? I can't quite understand why this seems hard for people to understand. Bad data is bad data. The presence or absence of other data doesn't affect that in any way.
You assume. By how much did it slow down? Did it slow down after 6 months, or after a year? The difference matters.
The numbers you provided actually give hints that the serial number database may be off by a wide margin on D3 sales. Nikon's initial estimate of sustained sell-through was about 100,000 units per year (8K per month). After 3 months, they increased that estimate to about 120,000 per year (they upped production (a considerable investment) to 10K per month, not 9K). The camera was in production for over 2 years.
If the 100,000 figure derived from the serial numbers is correct, that means Nikon was off by a factor of about 2.5X in its production plan. Possible? Yes. But there's no evidence that was true in the case of the D3.
To me (and I worked in the industry for 15 years and have direct experience with flagship camera sales curves) the better guess is that Nikon probably sold somewhere in the range of 150,000 to 200,000 D3 cameras. That is an educated guess, but I would never claim it's anything better than that. And I would never use it to make arguments about lessons Nikon has learned or about how much of any camera Nikon should produce in the future. It's way too unreliable for that.
If my guess based on Nikon's production figures is right, then the serial number database is off by a factor of 1.5-2X. That's very poor precision.
This is also an unverified assumption.
briantilley
Veteran Member
A ridiculous analogy.
The highest seerial number given for an item will generally be lower than the actual number of units in use, simply because not every owner supplies serial numbers to the site.
The numbers given are not "estimates" and not "nonsense" - they are actual serial numbers provided by owners of the product.
briantilley
Veteran Member
So, it seems we have to choose between an unreliable guess and actual data from real-world owners. Now let me see... ;-)
michaeladawson
Forum Pro
The wait list for a Z8 could potentially be far worse than the Z9. If the Z8 ships before most people get their Z9s then I think we will see a lot of Z9 pre-order cancellations.
The Z9/Z8 situation would be very similar to the D3/D700 situation in the sense that there is not a good alternative high performance body out there for Nikon mirrorless shooters today. The D3 would not have sold as well as it did if the D700 was released at the same time.
Note, that I'm not saying Nikon should hold back on a Z8 (or Z7 III). Nikon needs to do everything it can (IMO) to get their market share back up to reasonable levels again. 8% doesn't cut it. Unless, of course, Nikon has decided it just wants to be a profitable also-ran.
peripheralfocus
Veteran Member
Sure, and if that's all you said about them, nobody would object. But people use those numbers to make totally unreliable extrapolations about Nikon sales. That's nonsense, pure and simple.
Some people will never change their mind no matter how clear the evidence is that they're wrong. So, cool, you keep reaching conclusions about Nikon sales based on data that does not support those conclusions at all, and I'll keep pointing out why that's completely unreliable and should be given very little weight.
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peripheralfocus
Veteran Member
They are both unreliable guesses. Neither can support a firm conclusion. Why is this simple concept hard for people?
Also note that I label my guesses as guesses and acknowledge what they might or might not be good for.
Just do the same, clearly and adequately. Then people can decide for themselves whether to credit your point, or your argument, based on your "data".
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briantilley
Veteran Member
I don't understand how you can say the site's numbers are "guesses". They are not. People can draw unreasonable inferences from them, as you have pointed out, but that doesn't make them wrong in themselves - unless you disbelieve all the owners who have supplied the serials, or you distrust the site's owner(s).
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