While all the camera makers are piling into the mirrorless market (Sony should be the next to announce, on May 11th), I expect in the end most of them will be a bit disappointed. The reason: it'll be a short trend.
IDC this week is showing CPU shipments for netbooks having declined as a percentage of Intel's deliveries this quarter, which would indicate that personal computer makers are scaling back plans for future netbook models. Other figures previously reported show that the big growth surge in netbook sales has already disappeared. Thus, netbooks may have hit their saturation mark in only a couple of years. Given that some of those Atom CPUs that IDC is tracking probably are going into tablet clones chasing the iPad, the trend may actually be worse than first appears. What's that have to do with mirrorless cameras? Keep reading.
It always struck me that netbooks weren't exactly the future of personal computing. Netbooks were different things to different people. They were a low-cost solution during economically tough times. They were a "lighter, smaller, more portable, good enough" solution for people who already had decent computers but wanted something convenient to do basic tasks like email and word processing on the road or in the living room. They were an entry point to computing for students. And let's face it, they were cute (at least as far as laptops go). But users of netbooks discovered they definitely had an upper end in terms of performance and ability.
Mirrorless cameras will follow that same course, I think: a brief rush as they lap up several overlapping and pent up demands: small, light, convenient, cute, and ultimately inexpensive. When Panasonic first announced the G1, they made claims about a large "new market" that sat between the compact camera and DSLR. Indeed, there were significant gaps between the most competent compact camera and the low end DSLR at the time, but that was an artificial gap: the camera makers simply hadn't pushed compacts or DSLRs hard enough to meet in the middle.
I wrote many years ago that I wanted a large sensor compact. Where is it? Still not here. I also wrote many years ago that Nikon and others needed small, low-end DSLRs that were essentially stripped of features, not full of auto-everything support for novices (e.g. the FM2n for digital, not a D3000). We still don't have those either. Basically, the camera makers missed the user need for smaller, lighter, more convenient cameras that were highly competent.
The mirrorless cameras we're seeing today basically bridge that gap, much like netbooks bridged the entrance gap between a Blackberry and a full-fledged notebook. Mirrorless cameras are small, light, and competent. But as it turns out, Panasonics "gap" is not as large as many in the industry think it is, and once every DSLR user has a highly competent "compact," much of the demand dries up.
The rest of the mirrorless demand comes from compct users who want more performance. Here, too, the camera companies got greedy and missed a key product slot. You can easily see it in today's Nikon lineup. Top Coolpix model? An S8000, which will run you about US$259. Bottom DSLR? A D3000, which is currently being discounted to US$499. Gee, I wonder why? The gap was too big. Both in terms of price and in terms of product size.
My guess is that we'll see the high compact, mirrorless, and low-DSLR markets merge into a more continuous spectrum of cameras at each company, perhaps even with a bit of overlap. But that will be overkill: there isn't enough demand there for every company to have a high end compact, two or more mirrorless models, and two or more low-end DSLRs and get volume growth for more than a year or two.
Pretty much like what happened with netbooks. Big surge because there really was a hole that needed to be filled. Surge ends the minute it is filled and people once again look at the performance they really need.