Masaya Maeda, chief executive of Canon’s Image Communication Products Operations, said China was becoming the key market globally for digital camera makers, even as global shipments are expected to drop by 7% this year due to the economic slowdown.
Masaya Maeda said, "Although it too has been impacted by the financial crisis, China’s digital market is still on a rapid growth path. I think, by 2012, the country will be very close to taking up 20% of our global digital revenue."
Canon is the biggest player in the domestic digital camera market, with a nearly 30% share. It is followed by Sony, Samsung and Nikon.
English.Cri.cn reported that, this year, Canon has released over 23 new digital cameras in the domestic market. The company also launched a marketing campaign and invested a great deal of money in setting up huge posters in the metro systems in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to stimulate consumer demand.
It seems amazing, but if you count up all the models of digital cameras available from all makers curretly available the figures is nearly 1,000. The first consumer digital camera model came out in 1995.