Canon India has decided to rework its strategy to push sales of mid to high-end interchangeable lens cameras and digital SLRs. The rejig has been prompted with smartphones eating into basic or compact camera sales.
Canon India is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Canon Singapore Pvt Ltd. The average sale price of a DSLR stands at Rs 40,000.
According to Alok Bharadwaj, Executive Vice-President, Canon India, the company has seen a 12 per cent decline in compact camera sales during the year.
Around 50 per cent of the company’s turnover of Rs 1,850 crore is from camera – compact and DSLR – sales. Canon follows a calendar year for accounting purposes. Currently, interchangeable lens-enabled camera sales account for over 50 per cent (or around Rs 550 crore) of its camera sales. Canon competes with other brands such as Sony, Nikon, Olympus, Samsung in the camera market.
Accordingly, Canon’s new thrust would be promoting photography through free and paid workshops. An eight-hour crash course would be conducted at its academy — Eos Academy — for familiarising users with these high-end cameras. Pilots carried out in Mumbai and Gurgaon were successful.
Other initiatives include promotional activities such as having professional photographers guide amateurs around the city and so on.
Registration charges for the paid workshops range between Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,500. Canon has seven academies including one each in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata.
Further, the company would look to push for sales among women and youngsters through familiarisation programmes. Of a registered user-base of 50,000 with Canon, nearly 29 per cent are women.
The company, Bharadwaj said, would, however, continue with the compact camera portfolio. The portfolio would now be re-worked to include feature specific high-end models. A better zoom and image quality, focus on HD video recording and low light photography are some highlights.
“Re-working the portfolio to suit specific requirements have seen the average sale value of such point-and-shoot cameras move up to around Rs 7,000 from a previous Rs 5,000 range, market sources said.