Canon: leading China' digital SLR camera market
2008-08-11

                                            Canon: leading China' digital SLR camera market

The fast-growing digital SLR camera market has become a new industry growth point in 2007. This year, the DSLR market grew by 40% compared to the point-and-shoot market, which grew by 24%. As growth in the compact camera market has slowed, vendors have looked to DSLRs to provide additional revenue streams. DSLR market growth is driven by lower prices, easy-to-use technology, and increased model availability.

Consumers who are upgrading to DSLRs are no longer just hobbyists, but also include families with young children who are looking for cameras with no shutter lag. To seize the opportunity, not a few brands appeared in Chinese digital SLR camera market, and quickly seized their own markets.

The 2 major vendors, Canon and Nikon, continued to monopolize China's digital SLR camera market. However, Sony, Olympus, Samsung, Panasonic, Sigma and Pentax also stepped up their efforts to develop their digital SLR camera markets. And a large numerous of new digital SLR cameras will still be launched in 2008. Competition in China's digital SLR camera field has intensified in 2007. However, as digital camera sales enter a thin profit period, all brands will have basically the same profit ratio and channel competition will never have been more intense. But, the major brands competition will still be cruelty. To address this issue, some vendors adopt different channel policies to expand their market shares. In China's present digital camera market, Canon has built upon its strong brand reputation and adopted a flattened channel model to get as close to consumers as much as possible. Like Canon, Sony is also pursuing a flattened channel mode. However, Kodak has three types of main marketing channel models: IT agent channel, department store channel and exclusive imaging instrument stores.

In order to allow consumers a better understanding of the market, PCW Market Research Center released a survey of “2007-2008 Annual Report on China’s digital SLR camera brand market survey” recently. The survey was conducted in the January 14, 2008 to February 5, 2008 through the "computer" to be published with the survey questionnaire and a computer at the official website released a questionnaire from the investigation, reported by the computer market survey CTR Market Research Centre and the Research Corp. common data for statistical analysis. Input sampling a total of 45,926 questionnaires (with 10,382 copies published in the questionnaire, the network questionnaire 35,544), the filter does not meet the requirements of the answer to the questionnaire, the final data analysis of the actual sampling of 45,584 questionnaires. 2007 digital SLR camera market share of brands In this report, CANON, NIKON, SONY was seen as the top brands in the market occupancy, totally nearly 83 percent of the market. Among these, CANON, which was the first brand in Chinese market, reaching 40.35 percent occupancy rate, shows a strong capacity in the high-end SLR camera market. And the other brands only occupied below 7 percent. Here are the data coming from the report 

2008 digital SLR camera brand purchase intentions The report also shows the purchase willingness of consumers in 2008. According to the survey, the top brands that consumers mostly want to buy are also CANON, NIKON and SONY. What’s more, the demand of CANON is far more than the other two, nearly 46.1 percent of the consumers have the willingness of purchasing CANON. Meanwhile, NIKON and SONY only occupied 21.10 percent and 20.12 percent, 20 percentage points behind CANON. This shows that CANON established in consumers’ minds a good image. 

2008 digital SLR cameras intention of purchasing price Among large numerous of the surveyed consumers, almost 45% of the people prefer to pay 4000-4999 yuan to the digital SLR camera, and the price is higher, the percentage of purchasing is lower. The average purchase price for the intention is 6195.