March 23, 2006: Nikon expects that growing sales for the DLSRs will offset decreasing sales of less-featured models. Interestingly, they expect the most growth in the sub-$1,000 market. This is from Bloomberg:

Nikon Expects Advanced Digital Camera Shipments to Rise 30% March 20 (Bloomberg) — Nikon Corp., the world’s sixth- biggest digital camera maker, expects shipments of models with interchangeable lenses to rise 30 percent next year on lower- priced models.

Shipments of digital single-lens reflex cameras, geared for professionals and hobbyists, will gain to more than 1.8 million units in the year ending March 2007, from the expected 1.4 million this year, said Makoto Kimura, managing director for Nikon’s imaging products unit.

Nikon is betting consumer demand for SLRs will make up for a price slump in the $13 billion digital camera industry that drove out Konica Minolta Holdings Inc. and Kyocera Corp. Nikon competes with Canon Inc. in the professional market, where the two companies have an 80 percent market share.

“The driver will be the entry-level models,” priced around $1000, Kimura said. “We want to make them smaller and lighter to attract new users, as well as make them more affordable.”

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