Tamron Q1 financial report has been published. The operating Income increased significantly by approximately 1.7 times YoY with Significant record-high profits for the 1st quarter. Tamron writes:

Interchangeable lenses market showed double-digit growth on both volume and value basis, reflecting the strong performance of the camera market.

Those are their sales based on the region:

• Japan…2.07 billion yen (1.434 billion yen in Q1 2023)
• North America… 1,307 million yen (1,412 million yen)
• Europe… 1,299 million yen (1,417 million yen)
• Asia…8,836 million yen (4,977 million yen)
• Others…430 million yen (373 million yen)

As you can see it’s Asia and Japan that are driving the sales. Europe and North America actually had a decline in sales.

And the forecast looks great too:

Both in Own-Brand products and OEM products, double-digit upward revision of Original Forecast to double-digit sales growth. Despite of increase in materials costs due to higher raw material costs, planned to achieve double-digit Operating Income growth with high profitability.

Tamron also stated that a total of 7 lenses will be launched in 2024. Two of them have been already announced:

• 28-75mm Z-mount
• 11-20mm RF-mount

I guess some of the remaining 5 lenses will be new Z/X/RF mount versions of current E-mount lenses. But hopefully they will also launch some exciting new E-mount lenses they patented in the past years:

24-110mm f/4.0
25-50mm f/2.0
28-100mm f/2.8
28-120mm f/4.0
28mm f/1.4
30mm f/1.4
35mm f/1.4
40mm f/1.4
50mm f/1.4
75mm f/1.4
60mm f/2.0 macro
70-130mm f/2.0
90mm f/2.8 macro
135mm f/1.8
150mm f/2.8 macro
180mm f/3.5 macro
350mm f/4.5
200-400mm f/4.0
200-800mm f/5.6
13mm f/1.8 (APS-C)
18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 (APS-C)
18-500mm f/3.5-6.5 (APS-C)

Fingers crossed 1-2 of those designs will be coming in 2024!

The Chinese E-commerce platform JD.com released its report on brand sales in the camera and lens category in the past year:

UPDATE: The grey subtitle on the top left says “unit: million yuan”. So if we take Sony as an example, it means Sony sold 4269 million yuan, which is roughly 590 million USD.

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Found via Weibo (Thanks to the messenger for the translation!)

Dpreview had a chat with all major manufacturers and asked them about their most important products in the past 25 years. I do agree with Sony when they say the RX1 is their most important camera. I hope Sony will one day also realize that we need a new fixed lens FF camera :)

Here are the answers from all manufacturers:

Sony:
Sony RX1: The RX1 is the beginning of our photography culture. Before that, we had launched RX100 series but still inside the world of Cyber-shot, kind of. RX1 is definitely a different world compared with our previous circumstances. That was a very memorable development period.”
Sony G Master lenses: From these G Master lenses, our technology improvement accelerated and our customers also changed. Customers rated our product highly and that’s become a very big motivation for our designers and our engineers. This generated a very positive momentum from this point onward.

Nikon:
Nikon Z9: Because it’s a landmark in technology, pointing to the capabilities made possible by its parallel readout sensor.

Fujifilm:
Finepix X100: That was the first camera when we stepped up from selling point-and-shoot, entry-level compact cameras. This was our first attempt to do that, using the APS-C-sized sensor. X100 was a huge success, which gave us confidence. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have the X100,” he says Fujifilm’s “If that failed, we would have been in a very difficult position.”

Tamron:
Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 Di III RXD: That was a new concept because it was a fast lens, but we changed the focal length from 24mm to 28mm, and users accepted this concept. We knew that if we had a unique concept and we could let users know what that concept was, then people would understand. After that, we started to change, and we started developing unique lenses.”

Sigma:
Sigma 35mm F1.4 Art: If we’d failed with the launch of the 35mm F1.4, Sigma may not have survived until today. It was very fortunate that the customer received it very well and we could survive in the industry.
Sigma 18-35mm F1.8 Art: After we launched the lens, we realized that videographers and cinematographers really loved that lens. So with the introduction of this lens, we started getting interested in joining the cine lens business, so I love these two lenses.

OM System:
Olympus Camedia C-2000 Zoom: The change from film to digital left a big impression for me.

Canon:
Canon EOS Digital Rebel: It played a very important role in shifting [the market] from film to the digital DSLR,” says Go Tokura: “Since 2003, Canon has sold more than 1 million of them.

Panasonic:
Lumix DMC-G1: It was the first camera of its kind. Fifteen years ago, no professional photographer used mirrorless, but now almost all professional photographers use mirrorless.