ASIA-PACIFIC – SHANGHAI, CHINA, JULY 11, 2011 – Japanese brands Canon, Sony and Nikon reign as the top three brands of digital cameras used by Chinese families, according to new findings published today in the Chinese Family Digital Camera Usage Report produced by premier Chinese parenting website babytree.com and Ogilvy & Mather China. Notably, Chinese brands ranked much lower with Taiwanese brand BenQ at 13th and mainland Chinese brand Aigo at 15th.
Based on an analysis of the 200 million photos uploaded and tracked on babytree.com, this report provides insight into the market share of camera brands, brand concentration, brand conversion and loyalty. Babytree.com records photos uploaded onto its website in Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) which tracks the attribution and data of each photo. Processing the recorded information, analysts can see a clear trajectory of all digital camera brands in China emerging in the study.
Allen Wang, Founder and CEO of babytree.com, said, “The data reveals new insight which should be valuable for the industry. For instance, most Chinese families that own two or more cameras own different brands; they do not buy multiples of the same brand. So with the steady increase of families that own two or more cameras, brand conversion and loyalty will become an increasingly important competitive area for manufacturers.”
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Key findings include: Canon (21.9%), Sony (17.1%) and Nikon (16.3%) are the top three brands, making up more than 50% of the market. Among the top 10 brands, seven are Japanese (top three and Fujifilm 5.5%, Panasonic 3.3%, Olympus 3%, Casio 2.4%), with South Korean brand Samsung (10.8%) and American brand Kodak ranking 5th and 10th respectively.
Brand loyalty is relatively low in the category. Only one third of Canon users buy a Canon the second time around; 19.4% of Sony users and 17.7% of Nikon users buy the same brand again.
SLRs (Single Lens Reflex cameras) make up 14 of the top 20 camera models, which are all made by Canon and Nikon.
Phone cameras are becoming increasingly popular, comprising a steady 15-16 percent of the market. Nokia phone cameras hold the top four spots while Apple’s iPhone camera claims a relatively small market share of 1.23%. However it is worth noting that iPhone usage increased by 275 percent in 2010 and will continue to rise as iPhone distribution increases on the mainland.
Kunal Sinha, Chief Knowledge Officer, O&M China said, “We can see from the analysis that Chinese parents tend to opt for relatively more expensive SLRs that produce high quality digital photos or they use high tech camera phones for convenience. The study also shows that Chinese companies need to expend greater efforts to better understand and speak to the needs of their domestic market base.”
Launched in 2007, babytree.com was among the first websites in China to allow users to upload family photos without any storage limitations. The site now has 8 million active users. By June 2011 more than 200 million family photos had been uploaded to the website.
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