Stop Press - Courts decide issue once and for all: End of story

AS Disraeli famously put it "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics".

If you take an insignificantly small number and double it, is it meaningful to characterise it as growing by 100% or as being 2x insignificant?

And that is at least in part precisely my point.

Right, but they also supply the cash to underwrite Pentax’s loss making operations.

Following is snippet of a Reuters story from the latest Hoya quarterly financial report:

It was separately reported they highlighted a slow-down in dSLR market growth.

You pay your money and you take your chances. However alarm bells are ringing loudly on my bullshit detector as the rumour mill reaches fever pitch regarding planned Pentax product announcements for Photokina.

I have already deferred what are significant purchases in relation to my existing investment in the Pentax system until I see what is in fact bought to the table. If they fail to deliver I am highly likely to jump ship.

I have already dealt with your dishonest misrepresentations comprehensively.

People can now either elect to read what I wrote or engage in some more back-slapping; either way it is no skin off my nose.

The fact that you have found market share figures for 2007, would suggest we are looking at the same numbers:

http://www.cnet.com.au/digitalcameras/cameras/0,239036184,339287903,00.htm?feed=pt_digital_slr
or
http://www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS/1207604859.html

These numbers show Nikon gaining 7% market share between 2005 and 2007 (or a 25 percent gain in percentage market share using the ludicrous measure you cite above-more on that later).

As such my initial suspicion is substantially confirmed that that you are deliberately seeking to perpetuate your original dishonest argument, since on this basis icemann should obviously rush out and buy Nikon gear.

Furthermore, the reason you have been unable to find any figures for Pentax in the press release and other rehashes of the latest IDC data freely available, is undoubtedly because their market position is insignificant. Pentax is quite simply off the radar screen.

Following are some market share numbers for the first half of 2008. They are for Japan only but there seems little reason to believe they are materially different from the rest of the world except that Japan could well be a leading indicator:

Manufacturers:
Nikon: 40.7%
Canon: 40.6%
Sony: 8.6%
Olympus: 5.3%
Pentax: 4.4%

Top 10 Camera models:
Canon XSi/450D: 14.5%
Canon XTi/400D: 14.4%
Nikon D80: 13.1%
Canon 40D: 9.9%
Nikon D40: 9.2%
Nikon D60: 9.1%
Nikon D300: 4.4%
Sony A350: 4.1%
Nikon D40x: 3.8%
Sony A200: 2.8%

Source: http://bcnranking.jp/news/0807/080724_11351.html
Translated via http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1000&message=28963127
When attempting to infer meaningful information about trends from market share data it is critical to select appropriate comparison periods.

For example, given the pace of product development in the dSLR market you are arguably no better then your current product lineup, in which case you should use year on year change. Conversely if you wanted to show long term trends you might use a comparison between the heyday of film when Pentax dominated the market – indeed was synonymous with it – and from which their market position has subsequently collapsed spectacularly.

However, rather than using something to provide a meaningful insight, by your own admission you deliberately select a year in which Pentax was either not in the dSLR market or was only just entering it, as a basis comparison. You are quite clearly endeavouring to wilfully mislead.

In this context let us not forget the injection of your spurious percentage gain in percent market share measure. Changes in market share, which measures market power, are measured in percent market share; period.

Company X moving from a market share of 1% to 2% enjoys an imperceptible increase in market power. Clearly a claim that they had increased market share by 100% is a gross misrepresentation of the actual situation, since there is a complete disconnect between the percentage change and the base amount involved.

Furthermore in the case of both hypothetical company X and Pentax , this magnitude order of gains is statistically insignificant typically falling well within the margin of error in this type of analysis.

Eagle eyed readers may also have noticed that you slyly inserted your misleading homespun measure in square brackets in to the IDC market data; a reputable market research firm would never include a meaningless number with such vast potential to mislead.

This is what really troubles me with your statements. You might be forgiven for not knowing how to perform market share analysis or meaningful - if basic - arithmetic.

However, you carefully cherry-pick data points to make your dishonest argument, then attempt to defend the indefensible by hiding behind semantic devices, like some cheap lawyer lacking the skill to construct anything other than misleading verbiage. Or an unscrupulous stock promoter churning out press releases for a pump and dump operation. I notice you are based on the Isle of Mann; would either of those ‘professions’ fit you by any chance?

LOL. Your arrogance is surpassed only by your audacious hypocrisy.

My jaw almost dislocated when I read this.

Would you care to provide any hard facts or sourcing for what at best appears to be a wildly misleading line of argument?

Yup, and the Norton removal tool doesn't work properly in my experience.

Best way to kill it completely is to run a little freeware tool called Win Patrol: http://www.winpatrol.com/download.html

This allows you to examine services and start up programs and disable them one by one and includes a decent look-up reference.

It is also a useful adjunct to anti-virus software, since it sits in memory and requires authorisation for new applications/processes seeking to install themselves; if you are not specifically installing something it is reasonable to assume that malware has slipped through other defences.

Unlocker,

I have neither the time or inclination to get into a tedious sentence by sentence bun fight with you over this.

Therefore I am happy to leave you the last word:

I did actually google myself prior to asking and found the link you posted, but frankly assumed you had something far more substantive to base your position on.
Strictly speaking Samsung have so far invested nothing. What they have apparently done is deployed some of their significant R&D budget on developing a full frame sensor (salaries, materials, etc.). They will invest if and only if they develop a viable design *and* build and equip a semiconductor fabrication plant to crank these things out. However, such a decision would simply be inconsistent with their strategy.

I haven’t seen any comprehensive market studies on the digital camera market but from what I can quickly piece together Samsung have gone from nowhere in market share terms to becoming a big player in the overall market.

It seems they may have around 15% of the total worldwide digital camera market, estimated at around 130 million units per annum=20 million units. . Furthermore, without basing this on much I would assume they make sensors for a substantial portion of their market share of the 630 million camera phones sold annually. This is what Samsung do; big, big volume.

By contrast the market for dSLRs is less than 10 million units per annum, of which I would guess that the full frame segment is most certainly less than 5% and probably less than 2% in volume terms. This means the total full frame market is less than 500,000 units per annum of which Samsung have a current market share of 0%.

Even if they could poach all of the Nikon and Canon business simultaneously this would be a tiny, tiny sideline that is just not consistent with Samsung’s high volume, market leader strategy.

That said the d SLR market has been growing, and basic business planning/prudence could warrant R&D is committed to have designs available that cater for any future market eventuality, notwithstanding the fact that any R&D pipeline - never mind one as big as Samsung’s - will contain a large majority of projects that never make it to commercialisation.

This view would be subject to greater uncertainty if your Sony/Playstation analogy were accurate but unfortunately this is simply not the case. Sony have always made either marginal or negative returns on the Playstation hardware itself but have been handsomely rewarded for this seeming act of generosity by vast profits from captive sales of in-house developed software and fat royalties from third party publishers; a cross-subsidy. Conversely Samsung have no such means of financial compensation since they have farmed out all lens production to third-parties, as far as I'm aware.

Furthermore, the investment required in new lenses to switch systems for existing - and likely also a majority of prospective - full frame customers is in no way comparable to that of a few video games at £10-20 a pop.

I don’t know the dSLR market in any detail but I do know that markets where you have two dominant suppliers (in this case Nikon and Canon) tend to generate terrible profits across the board, and see little reason to suppose it is different in this case (just look at the complete exit of Konica-Minolta a few years ago).

In such circumstances it is nevertheless possible for small players to make decent profits by carving out niche markets, but entering a highly concentrated full frame segment certainly doesn’t fit that bill. And baring them hitting on a winning formula, I unfortunately see a somewhat higher probability of Pentax going the way of the dodo than launching a shiny new full frame dSLR.

Thanks for posting that.

I am in the market for a wide angle zoom lens and it would obviously be nice to keep my future options open as far as possible.

That said on the basis of this evidence alone it seems to me your enthusiasm for the prospect of a Samsung (/Pentax) full frame dslr is not sustainable.

Who knows though.