In its own 2024 corporate report, Sony claims that it holds the #1 spot in market share for sales of full-frame mirrorless cameras.
Sony previously also made this same claim in 2022 based on data from NPD market research group. In that same year, Canon, using its own sales and market criteria, also asserted that it held the top spot on mirrorless camera sales for 2022.
Now, for the 2024 claims by Sony, these are based on the company’s own internal data, meaning that their reliability is possibly slightly less than it would be from an external research source like NPD.
Sony’s current claim of having the number one spot in market share is based on internal data from its 2023 fiscal year sales results.
Amusingly though, for 2024, Canon once again also claims to have the #1 spot on the mirrorless camera market. In Canon’s case, the brand makes this claim for the U.S market in particular, but it’s a curious echo of what happened in 2022.
Moving back to Sony’s report, the website Sony Alpha Rumors looked further into it and found a number of other interesting details.
Among these is the claim by Sony that its lens business is more profitable than its interchangeable camera sales. Additionally, Sony claims that both the markets for lenses for mirrorless cameras and mirrorless cameras themselves have less potential than the brand’s cinema camera business.
The possible reasons behind this trend as claimed by Sony seem obvious enough: Smartphones are eating into the market for mirrorless cameras and consequently, lenses for these cameras will also suffer.
Cinema cameras are wholly different and serve a more complex set of recording needs for their users. Smartphones (at least so far) can’t match these needs to eat into the cinema camera market.
Another area Sony cites for potential market growth is “sports.” Sony’s developments in this curiously ambiguous category include sophisticated imaging technology for live sports events, such as the brand’s Hawk-Eye video system, which is reported to be used by roughly 70% of major soccer leagues.
Another area of growth for Sony is its image sensor business. This is partly tied to Sony’s own camera sales, since, obviously, the brand makes the sensors for its own cameras.
However, this growth in Sony’s sensor business is also partly separate from its camera sales, and even partially immune to inroads by the growth of smartphone camera use.
The reason why is that Sony actually makes many of the smartphone camera sensors used on the market today. Notably, Apple’s best-selling iPhones all currently use Sony sensors in their cameras, as confirmed by Apple CEO TimCook himself.
This Sony business branch is not only robust but growing, with Sony claiming 53% of the market share globally in 2023, as compared to 49% of the share in 2022.
Sony claims to have invested heavily in CMOS sensor technology during the last half-decade or so. The company specifically claims to have poured roughly $10.6 billion or 1.5 trillion Japanese yen into sensor development.
Examples of Sony’s own cameras benefitting from so much investment in advanced, quality sensor technology abound.
A notable example among them is the global image shutter sensor found in Sony’s top-shelf a9 III camera, which is unique in the camera market.
Sony also continues to support the C2PA standard for content provenance and authenticity through its cameras. The brand has added C2PA developments to some of its high-end cameras on a limited basis and states,
“It is of ever-greater significance for creators behind the lens to capture the real world ‘as it is.’ CMOS image sensors are also used in verifying the authenticity of an image to ensure that it consists of a real subject shot by a real person using a camera,”
The bottom line for Sony is that its camera market share and growth remain robust, and are further buoyed by a broader mirrorless camera market trend of growing sales during the last three years.
The brand’s sensor business will probably continue to grow regardless of what happens to the mirrorless camera market and Sony’s mirrorless cameras are genuinely appreciated by many, many users, both amateur and pro.
Canon may have a strong claim of leading on sales volume in the camera market, but at the very least, I doubt it beats Sony for dominance in R&D.
