Canon, Samsung grow share at cost of rivals
By
Mike Tomkins
(Thursday, May 17, 2007 - 17:32 EDT)
A year after taking the number one spot for US digicam market share from rival Eastman Kodak Co., Canon Inc. has continued to strengthen its position, says a blog item from C|Net News.com today.
According to the C|net item, based on a report from market research firm IDC, Canon Inc. retained the top spot with a 21% market share - up from the 19.3% it recorded a year ago. Second place was retained by Japan's Sony Corp., although the company's market share fell slightly from 17.1% to 16%.
Third-placed Eastman Kodak Co., which took 14.5% of the US digicam market last year, continued to see an overall decline in share to 13%. The news wasn't all negative for Kodak however, as it recorded its first increase in shipments in five quarters, the 5% gain being attributed to the $2-300 compact camera segment by IDC.
Aside from Canon's consolidation of its number one spot, Samsung was the other big winner in the Q1 2007 figures. Having recorded a market share of just 4% in Q1 2006 (and a 7.8% share for the year overall) the South Korean company took an impressive 11% of all Q1 2007 digicam sales in the US market. This feat saw the company record fourth place in the overall rankings for Q1, a step up from the fifth place it recorded for the whole of 2006.
C|Net's item doesn't mention the fifth and sixth place finishers, but notes that Nikon's market share fell from 13% in Q1 2006 to just 7% in Q1 2007. This left the Japanese company in seventh place for the first quarter, a step further down from the sixth place it recorded in overall 2006 market share. On the bright side for Nikon, IDC analyst Christopher Chute was quoted by C|Net as stating that the company "did well with DSLRs" - and with these being a higher-margin segment, it may perhaps be content to yield some of the lower-margin compact camera ground to rivals...
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