The traditional DSLR is still being bought, in the hundreds of thousands, and Canon continue to dominate this market, with a 44.3% market share for all DSLR sales at BCN Japan, and looking at what’s on sale, it’s easy to see that Canon’s entry level DSLRs remain cheaper than most mirrorless cameras.

Whilst everyone, including us here at AP, is singing the justified virtues of mirrorless cameras, there is still a large fanbase interested in buying and using DSLRs, with the optical viewfinder being one of the unique features (along with excellent battery life) that makes the DSLR a choice for many. This is still the case, even though the last new Canon DSLR, the Canon EOS 850D, was released almost 6 years ago in 2020, meaning that if you buy a ‘new’ DSLR today, it’s actually using technology that’s 6 years old (or older).

Personally, I’m a big fan of mirrorless cameras, but as technologically advanced as they are, there’s still more that could be done to improve mirrorless cameras, and there are still – to this day – some reasons why DSLR cameras are better than mirrorless. One area where they are not better is in regards to lenses, as Canon and Nikon have no plans to release new lenses for DSLRs.

Following on from Canon, Nikon are ranked in 2nd place with 38% of market share, and this is where there is a big change, as previous years Nikon has only had a 20.9% market share, with Canon further ahead with 69.4%. Perhaps this change could be due to more mirrorless camera sales, or less availability of Canon DSLRs, unfortunately the report does not go into further sales detail.

In third place, and for those that know the DSLR market this will be kind of obvious, is the only other player: Ricoh/Pentax with 17.7% market share. The only other brand still making and selling DSLR cameras, and luckily lenses too. And again, this is an increase for Pentax (part of Ricoh), which leads me to believe that there are less Canon DSLRs available – so, could Canon be phasing out the DSLR? Only time will tell.

Related reading:

• DSLR vs mirrorless: which is best?
• In the DSLR market, there’s one clear winner, and nobody else even comes close
• Mirrorless cameras now outsell DSLRs by almost 5 to 1 – I’m surprised it’s not more

Source BCN Japan (use a web browser with built-in translation if you want to head over and take a look) – BCN Inc are based in Tokyo and are a market research firm that collects POS (Point of sale) data from an estimated 40-60% of Japanese retailers. Via Petapixel.

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