Reading mode: Light Dark

the most basic of all questions .... is M 4/3 getting more popular ?

Go to last post
M

Mr Giggles

Leading Member
Messages
950
Reaction score
1,826
I understand that there is a downward trend in camera sales .....

But among digital cameras that are being sold is it gaining or losing in popularity ?????
 
No.

The main camera used around the world is the smartphone.

The market for dedicated cameras is dominated by APS-C and FF - approx 85% of all camera sales are Canon, Sony and Nikon. Add Fuji and it is about 90%.

So MFT sales are equivalent to the size of a bee's donger. It's a niche. Whether it goes up or down is immaterial in term of the entire market.
 
I am not sure. However many here think of m43rds as Panasonic and Olympus.

Notable Body producers alone include:
  • Olympus
  • Panasonic
  • Z-Cam
  • blackmagic
  • Yongnuo
lens makers are even more prolific with the complete options from Olympus and Panasonic, then all the other lens makers from voigtlanders at the higher end though a quality produces like Laowa, then the video centric lens makers etc.

It is hard to know the size of this system overall. In a shrinking market being a small player isn’t the best spot, but being a small player where your major investments are made and where you can focus on Body technologies could be a lot worse.

i looked at getting an 8-25, and here in Canada it is stated to ship late august. So there must be some demand coming from somewhere.

Having said that I think with the right marketing and communication strategy this system still has potential.
 
Pete_W said:
No.

The main camera used around the world is the smartphone.

The market for dedicated cameras is dominated by APS-C and FF - approx 85% of all camera sales are Canon, Sony and Nikon. Add Fuji and it is about 90%.

So MFT sales are equivalent to the size of a bee's donger. It's a niche. Whether it goes up or down is immaterial in term of the entire market.
Click to expand...
Maybe immaterial to you. Obviously not to the OP.
 
Mr Giggles said:
Pete_W said:
So MFT sales are equivalent to the size of a bee's donger. It's a niche. Whether it goes up or down is immaterial in term of the entire market.
Click to expand...
Humor me .... even if its the size of a bee's willy winker ......

is it going up or down ?
Click to expand...
I really don't know. CIPA's public reports don't dissect units shipped by brand, at least as far as I am aware.
 
least was that Olympus in Japan lost marketshare (talking about the cameras). That was the strongest market. By losing marketshare I mean relative to the whole market and not COVID.

Those were the latest reports. That said, I think there will be some video niche with Panasonic since they are doing that so well. I am curious to see how the EP7, EM10MKIII and EM5.3 are faring. Plus the EM1 MKIII.

The last graph I saw recently for the Japanse market showed Fuji gaining some market at Olympu's expense. (or at least seemed that way in the chart). In the mean time Canon and Sony are the top dogs battling each other right now in mirrorless. While Nikon is still selling quite a chunk of DSLR's at least in Europe but seems to have become a third place to Canon and Sony.

--
Raist3d/Ricardo (Photographer, software dev.)- I photograph black cats in coal mines at night...
“The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.” - George Orwell
 
Last edited:
Raist3d said:
least was that Olympus in Japan lost marketshare (talking about the cameras). That was the strongest market. By losing marketshare I mean relative to the whole market and not COVID.

Those were the latest reports. That said, I think there will be some video niche with Panasonic since they are doing that so well. I am curious to see how the EP7, EM10MKIII and EM5.3 are faring. Plus the EM1 MKIII.

The last graph I saw recently for the Japanse market showed Fuji gaining some market at Olympu's expense. (or at least seemed that way in the chart). In the mean time Canon and Sony are the top dogs battling each other right now in mirrorless. While Nikon is still selling quite a chunk of DSLR's at least in Europe but seems to have become a third place to Canon and Sony.
Click to expand...

Loading…

photorumors.com

So looks like Olympus cameras swapped places with Fuji again as of now, even though what I said above did happen relatively recently, but it's no longer valid it seems for Japan's market as of right now.

If that pattern holds, then probably that means it's gaining popularity.
 
who knows ? who cares ?

are you telling us you would choose one brand of camera over another just based on the global sales figure ?

I don t mean to be criticizing but who would choose its camera based on its popularity.. unless you are planning to rent equipment all other the world

Harold
 
Member said:
Those were the latest reports. That said, I think there will be some video niche with Panasonic since they are doing that so well.
Click to expand...
More than likely the Full frame stuff , the S5 seems to have been a hit for them.

--
** Please ignore the Typos, I'm the world's worst Typist **
 
Last edited:
Ab Latchin said:
I am not sure. However many here think of m43rds as Panasonic and Olympus.

Notable Body producers alone include:
  • Olympus
  • Panasonic
  • Z-Cam
  • blackmagic
  • Yongnuo
lens makers are even more prolific with the complete options from Olympus and Panasonic, then all the other lens makers from voigtlanders at the higher end though a quality produces like Laowa, then the video centric lens makers etc.

It is hard to know the size of this system overall. In a shrinking market being a small player isn’t the best spot, but being a small player where your major investments are made and where you can focus on Body technologies could be a lot worse.

i looked at getting an 8-25, and here in Canada it is stated to ship late august. So there must be some demand coming from somewhere.

Having said that I think with the right marketing and communication strategy this system still has potential.
Click to expand...
Regarding your last sentence it seems to me that smart marketing is leading us by the noses to buy new gear that is way over specified for most amateur use, and certainly for the Flickr/Instagram/camera club projected image comps folk. My personal observation is the my M4/3 gear does not cut the mustard with camera enthusiasts and group think is that 35mm or MF are the only way to get decent projected images.

Higher prices should mean higher profits per unit and in the face of phone cameras is probably the only way to sustain profitable businesses for the time being.
 
I believe it is drifting along at 5%-7% of ILC sales.

The format is a very good one, if not the best, for casual travel photography, the most popular use of cameras.

It is hard to understand after all the good press it got at its inception, why the format never really took off and became mainstream.

I think the Olympus divestment and Panasonics shift to the FF S series, might answer your question. I think the Sony Betamax story has a lot of parallels with the M43 format.
 
It hard to judge with all the chaos caused by Corona.

I went to Goodwood Festival of Speed a few weeks ago. It's an outdoor car show located to the South Of England. When it came to DSLRs, Canon was on top as usual but this year both M43 and Sony were number 1 when it came to mirrorless. The last time i went to Festival of Speed was in 2018 and Fuji dominated the mirrorless cameras with it younger photographers.

That said Goodwood Revival is a vintage car show and more older folks go to it than the younger people who preferences fast cars or what is my next car to buy. At Revival you often see M43 cameras.
 
Mr Giggles said:
I understand that there is a downward trend in camera sales .....

But among digital cameras that are being sold is it gaining or losing in popularity ?????
Click to expand...
It's an interesting question.

When eventually the covid threat wanes and travel restrictions are lifted, many people will be eager to finally get away for foreign holidays and other travel. With it having been so long, people will want to be making an occasion of it too. As M43 cameras make ideal travel cameras, this would be a good opportunity for M43 to play to its advantages and gain a bit of market share.

For this reason I think it would be good for Panasonic to have an updated GX10 ready for when this happens - as a starting point, offering as much of the G9 performance as is practical inside a GX9-sized body (and no arbitrary dropping of features just for product segmentation purposes (as with cinelike-D/cinelike-V on the GX80/85, for example)).
 
IN my Birding world definitely seeing more. Also more Fuji and Sony. Definitely no longer a Canikon monopoly.

In my Aviation world the complete opposite. Still very much a Canikon monopoly. You do see a few m4/3s and the odd Sony but old habits die hard here.

In both the above categories you do see a fair few bridge cameras. Very popular with the people for whom the most important thing is the record shot.
 
Mr Giggles said:
I understand that there is a downward trend in camera sales .....

But among digital cameras that are being sold is it gaining or losing in popularity ?????
Click to expand...
Down and if you have any of it you should sell it all off as soon as possible.
 
I’ve noted the increase of Olympus cameras in my club over the past few years. After a year and a half of COVID and no club meetings, we just now began to restart meetings. We lost 4 members to the COVID, and a number of our members are seasonal residents and are still at their summer hideouts.

Last week we had only 15 members attend. 13 were now shooting Mirrorless, and 2 Canon DSLR. Of the Mirrorless, 1 Sony, 1Fuji, 1Nikon, 10 Olympus. I should note that we our club is almost entirely made up of retired folks that travel quite a bit, and bird shooting is prevalent, as well.

This certainly is not representative of the industry as a whole, but might be indicative of the market segment that is a good fit for M4/3 offerings.
 
Last edited:
chorleyjeff said:
Ab Latchin said:
I am not sure. However many here think of m43rds as Panasonic and Olympus.

Notable Body producers alone include:
  • Olympus
  • Panasonic
  • Z-Cam
  • blackmagic
  • Yongnuo
lens makers are even more prolific with the complete options from Olympus and Panasonic, then all the other lens makers from voigtlanders at the higher end though a quality produces like Laowa, then the video centric lens makers etc.

It is hard to know the size of this system overall. In a shrinking market being a small player isn’t the best spot, but being a small player where your major investments are made and where you can focus on Body technologies could be a lot worse.

i looked at getting an 8-25, and here in Canada it is stated to ship late august. So there must be some demand coming from somewhere.

Having said that I think with the right marketing and communication strategy this system still has potential.
Click to expand...
Regarding your last sentence it seems to me that smart marketing is leading us by the noses to buy new gear that is way over specified for most amateur use, and certainly for the Flickr/Instagram/camera club projected image comps folk. My personal observation is the my M4/3 gear does not cut the mustard with camera enthusiasts and group think is that 35mm or MF are the only way to get decent projected images.
Click to expand...
chorleyjeff said:
Higher prices should mean higher profits per unit and in the face of phone cameras is probably the only way to sustain profitable businesses for the time being.
Click to expand...
I think your last two comments combined make for interesting thought. Consider all IKC makers have been increasing prices dramatically, while there is some parity at the low end, at the high end the differences become more clear.

As to your photography group, that is exactly why a better communication strategy is needed. I, and everyone else here is well aware there are better cameras out there on pure IQ measurements, yet we chose this format. If the why can be cleaned up, bottled, and presented Coherently it improves sales, and business forecasts.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Keyboard shortcuts

f
Forum
m
My threads
Mobile site
About
Editorial content
Cameras & Lenses
Community
All content, design, and layout are Copyright © 1998–2025 Digital Photography Review All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction in whole or part in any form or medium without specific written permission is prohibited.
When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission.
©GPS Media - Guides, Products, Services.
Back
Top