Canon expects continued positive growth in DSLR sales when compared to last year

Canon’s Ireland division said the company is still continuing to expect steady sales in digital SLR cameras despite the recent economic slowdown, and they describe Ireland as a younger market with higher camera percentage growth rates when compared to the British market. Canon is releasing updates to its higher-end digital SLR cameras.

Canon Ireland said that overall for 2008, they plan on sales being up. There is still a huge demand for digital SLRs and there continued to be double-digit growth rates in that product right up to August.

Canon claims its compacts are becoming more powerful when you compare them to the competition as the  new DIGIC 4 photo-processing chip that helps these models with faster operation, improved motion and face  detection and better resolution.

Canon says the gap between the lower and higher end SLRs are not closing too much. they go on to say the primary advantage of digital SLR is the lenses, and what they are targeting is the replacement market. So, everybody may have first digital camera and now they are looking to upgrade it to a DSLR camera.

On the digital SLR model-series, Canon says they are also seeing continued growth as users are "trading up" from compacts. The unit sales are up, but the revenue is up by a higher amount when compared to unit sales, so that shows people are trading up to higher end digital SLR models.