Nikon: CSC not impacting DSLR sales

News
By Amy Davies
published

Still growing, especially in entry level, says firm

Nikon D3200
Nikon is still firmly backing its DSLR range

Nikon has said that it has yet to see any impact on its DSLR sales as a result of the increase in compact system cameras on the market, including its own Nikon 1 system.

Speaking to TechRadar, Jeremy Gilbert, Nikon UK's marketing manager, said, "From our perspective, CSC is not having an impact on our DSLR range. I think what it does is really confirm our initial view that compact system camera is a growing category, and a growing market in its own right."

Gilbert said it was difficult to directly compare the impact of Nikon 1 sales with DSLR as its introduction coincided with the flooding of the Thailand factory.

Nikon was however, reasonably late to the CSC market, facing competition from the likes of Panasonic, Olympus and Sony. "We hadn't found that other manufacturers were taking away business from DSLR, in fact the digital SLR market was in growth.

"From my perspective, some of the other brands who were pushing CSCs actually drove people in store, possibly even increasing the DSLR market.

"Advertising gives awareness for photography as a whole, not just necessarily for one sector."

Other manufacturers have predicted that compact system cameras will continue to grow in market share, when compared with DSLRs. In Japan, trends show that CSC sales have already overtaken DSLRs, with recent predictions by Panasonic suggesting that the UK will also see the same trend by 2015.

"We firmly believe that there are three good defined categories, there is overlap, but what is pleasing is that we haven't seen any cannibalisation, where one area of the market is reduced and replaced with another - we've got growth, which is what we want," Gilbert said.

Also rebuffing predictions that CSC would overtake DSLR, Gilbert said, "It's not our prediction, and it's not something I would say. There's certainly a place for SLR. We're planning to grow in all sectors and are not looking to replace or take away from the SLR market at all."

According to the firm, the Nikon 1 J1 had been the number one best-selling compact system camera in the UK for around 12 weeks earlier in the year.

This week it announced a new entry level DSLR, the Nikon D3200, to sit alongside the D3100, which was 2011's biggest selling DSLR.

Amy Davies
Amy Davies

Amy has been writing about cameras, photography and associated tech since 2009. Amy was once part of the photography testing team for Future Publishing working across TechRadar, Digital Camera, PhotoPlus, N Photo and Photography Week. For her photography, she has won awards and has been exhibited. She often partakes in unusual projects - including one intense year where she used a different camera every single day. Amy is currently the Features Editor at Amateur Photographer magazine, and in her increasingly little spare time works across a number of high-profile publications including Wired, Stuff, Digital Camera World, Expert Reviews, and just a little off-tangent, PetsRadar.