Sunday, September 09, 2007

Canon vs. Nikon – update

In my old post, When to Announce New Products, I described the different marketing strategies adopted by Canon and Nikon, the two leading makers of Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) cameras.

On Aug 20, 2007, Canon announced a new camera – EOS 40D. It hit the shelves in Hong Kong immediately. Three days later, Nikon announced the contender – D300. As noted in my earlier post, I suspect Nikon is telling the shutterbugs, “Don’t buy Canon. Wait for us. We have some nice stuff in the pipeline.” Nikon D300 is, indeed, better than Canon EOS 40D (on paper), even though it is also more pricey.









Has Nikon succeeded? To find out, I browsed the forum for Hong Kong’s photographers, http://www.dchome.net/. Here are some interesting posts…



lmfu wrote:

都話左預先公佈呢招係險招黎啦, D200個銷售情況跌得好犀利, 係估唔到40D冇乜受N既策略影響。

It has been said that pre-announcing [the products] is a risky move. Sale of D200 drops terribly, but we didn’t expect that 40D is hardly affected by Nikon's strategy.


samuelhu wrote:

D200 銷售情況跌得好犀利, 我諗未必關40d,好可能d人想等D300

Sale of D200 drops terribly, but I think this may not be related to 40D. Perhaps the people are waiting for D300.


D200 mentioned above is Nikon’s existing offering and D300’s predecessor. It appears that the strategy of pre-announcing a product before it is available is a double-edged sword. It dents Nikon’s own sales more than that of Canon.



6 comments:

  1. What is your call about it then? I have no knowledge about photography. For canon & nikon is the sales that count. For the consumers is the best quality that counts.

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  3. rincess,
    This post is about marketing, not photography.

    Imagine this: you plan to buy an iPod. Then you learn that Apple has just announced new iPod models at lower price. You change your mind and wait a few more months. This is not something good for Apple.

    We consumers would like to see competition between Canon and Nikon heats up. We would get better gears at lower price.

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  4. Is this for your masters project? Eh, u cannot recognize me in my blog photos ar?

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  5. princess,
    No lah, this is not for my project. In fact, we don't learn about this type of marketing strategies in MBA.

    As for your blog photos, as first I couldn't recognize you. But after looking again I knew already lah, haha...

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  6. How come cannot recognize in the beginning? Wakakaka....

    I think u tend to think more strategically & rationality at all things now (In a nutshell, COMPLICATED). Hahahaha

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