BCN Awards for the year of 2018: Canon #1 in DSLR and Mirrorless for Japan

BCN released their annual awards for the Japan market today, and some surprises were certainly in the results.

First for ILC's Canon remained #1 in DSLR's however slipping a bit from their high of 61.1% in 2017 to 57.4% in 2018.  Nikon still finished second, taking the majority of their marketshare gains from Canon.  Ricoh still places third, and by calculating out the 100%, we can surmise that Sony fell even further to an almost non-existent .2% for the SLT's including the somewhat new A99 II.  For two years straight Canon has declined in DSLR marketshare, understandable given the success of the D850 camera for Nikon, and the strong competition at the lower end of the market.

For mirrorless, for what will be a surprise to some, but not so much us as Canon has announced last year that they were #1 in the first half and the M50 dominated BCN's monthly reports since that time.  Canon unlike for DSLR's dramatically increased it's marketshare for the third year in a row, gaining over 10% of the market in a single year.  Somewhat interestingly, is that it's turning into a three horse race, because not since 2011 have we seen the top three take over 75% of the entire mirrorless market as we have seen this last year with 77.8%.  Sony remained strong, buoyed certainly by their strong A7 III release, and Olympus slipped a little in the last year.  The manufacturers not seen on the list are the ones that hurt the most losing over 8% in the year.

About three years ago Canon through one of their executives made it clear that their goal was to achieve a #1 position in mirrorless domestically.  3 years later they now are on track to dominate.

All is not rosy when it comes to Canon, however, as a surprise happened in the compact camera market, where Nikon leapfrogged Canon to take the #1 spot for the first time since BCN started giving out awards for the calendar year of 2005.  Even though both gained marketshare this last year, Nikon gained the most, with approximately 6% gain.  Knowing that Canon prides themselves on being #1 in the domestic market, expect to not see Canon stand still in this market over the next several years as they will want to unseat the new leader.

For lenses, Canon continues to hold the lead for lenses, however, that lead is slipping as Canon has lost marketshare for three years in a row from their high in 2015 of 24.1%.  Nikon slips back into #3 position, having lost the #3 position the year past to Tamron.  Sigma remains a strong #2 lens provider in Japan.

Who is BCN? BCN collects point of sale data from around half of the stores in Japan.  It is a very detailed and comprehensive survey of the Japan marketplace.