Sony Interview at Imaging Resource: DSLR market is shrinking. 4K market is growing crazy fast.
Imaging Resource interviewed Mike Fasulo, Neal Manowitz and Toshifumi Okuda from Sony. Here are some key highlights of the interview:
1) DSLR market declinging: “So we see one of the challenges we have, as we were sharing last night, is that the DSLR market’s declining.”
2) 4K: “You’re looking at your personal creative work on a 4K monitor, there’s nothing more spectacular than that. You want to see a mom smile, just put her child in 4K on a television.”. Further there is a “Crazy-fast adoption for 4K TVs (4K is a really big deal)”
3) Mirrorless is growing (but more slowly in USA): “if we look at the mirrorless market, it’s growing significantly. It’s been growing for years in Asia as well, but there’s quite unique differences, right? In the US market, as Mike pointed out, bigger is better.”
4) DSLR vs Mirrorless: “What’s exciting is simply that you can capture an image that you could have never captured before. You can do things that you couldn’t have done before. Forget about the technology, whether it happens to be mirrorless or DSLR, that’s not the real win here. What’s happening is that the technology enables you to do something special.”
5) System cameras vs Smartphones: “We’re competing against how we convince customers to come back to the imaging world. Everybody seems to feel good enough with a smartphone camera, but that’s not necessarily the case.”
6) Sony-Olympus partnership: “for now, I will say there is no impact or an influence in terms of the Digital Imaging product concerned”
7) High Frame rate on new cameras: “High frame rate is an area where it doesn’t show up as high in terms of the voice from the customer, but we see the opportunity. And there’s been many times in our history where there is that imagination, that ability and the conviction to go after that market, right?”
8) A7rII and A-mount lenses: “On the Sony A7R II, the technology lends to everything we were talking about upstairs, with the better focusing and the ability for it to now use A-mount glass as if it was native glass. And that’s a big benefit, especially for someone that’s already invested in A-mount cameras and their lens technologies. So there’s a huge value there.”
Imaging Resource conslusion is:
Bottom line, nothing’s ever a given in the camera business, and ongoing success is never assured. But Sony seems to have developed a set of successful strategies, has a good understanding of where their strengths lie, and shows no sign of letting up any time soon. Stay tuned; there’s never been a better time to be a photographer, and Sony certainly seems poised to do their part in continuing to let the good times roll :-)
A7rII preorder list:
In USA: at Amazon, BHphoto, Adorama, SonyStore US, FocusCamera, Uniquephoto.
In Europe at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT. Wex UK.
In Asia at Digitalrev, CameraPro.
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