In going through the individual camera pages of this site during my site cleanup, I kept track of how many models each of the makers had created in the short life (2009 to present) of mirrorless cameras.
Think you know how many cameras that was and who has made the most models?
Okay, get out a piece of paper and write down your total and the top three mirrorless camera creators.
Now scroll down to see if you’re right…
Clearly, the first movers (Panasonic, Olympus, and Sony, in that order) had an advantage. Canon's and Nikon’s late moves—even considering their now discontinued earlier entries (M and 1 respectively)—put them more towards the back of the pack still active in terms of overall mirrorless camera models.
A slightly surprising statistic is that we’ve had a grand total of 266 different mirrorless models produced, but 68 of those are "current" models. Note that I’m aggressive in moving models from “current” to “older” status, even though some of the camera makers will continue to sell overbuilt inventory of an older model when they introduce a replacement. Therefore, there’s probably 80 to 90 “new” models you can buy right now. Both numbers seem high given that the overall sales volume is just over the 5m unit mark each year. Quite a few models must be selling in the low tens of thousands of units a year worldwide.
Note: I haven’t counted the dedicated video mirrorless models, only the ones that I’d consider hybrids or stills-oriented. Pentax includes some discontinued Ricoh models in the Older column.
In the last five years we’ve seen 22, 14, 16, 17, and 14 new models introduced, so the still available current models are basically equivalent to the new camera model introductions of the past four-and-a-half years.
Oddly, Panasonic is probably fifth in global market share of mirrorless cameras, but at the moment has one of the highest current model counts (though they're not available in every region). I suspect that will change soon, as it doesn’t seem sustainable.
