Mirrorless Cameras Lose Their Shine? NYC and USA Today report with Panasonic-Olympus analysis.

That mirrorless wasn’t a huge success in US and Europe as in Asia is known. And two articles at The New York Times (Click here) and USA Today (Click here) analyzed the situation. I cite three parts of their articles:

1) Nikon manager Okamato said “In Europe and the U.S. the ratio of mirrorless to SLRs hasn’t grown at all, unlike in Asia, where it’s quite popular with women because it’s light. We had higher expectations for other regions. But people who like cameras tend to just go for SLRs, even though they’re very heavy.”

2) Olympus Corp said on Thursday that its sales of its signature mirrorless model, the PEN, had fallen 12 percent in the first quarter, below its expectations.

3) Panasonic manager Darrin Pepple said “In the U.S. at least, [DSLRs are] still what they know and what they understand. We’re continuing to innovate in the way of lenses, size, form factors, trying to find the magic bullet.” Panasonic has found that DSLR-style feature sets are more attractive to Americans, and simpler mirrorless models failed to find an audience.

Mirrorless growth now stucks in US and Europe. I personally have the feeling that it’s only a matter of time until mirrorless will grow again. But I have to admit, this is just a feeling not based on real facts.