Nikon To Exit SLR Camera Business Amid Growing Competition From Smartphones: Report

After Canon, Nikon is the second biggest manufacturer of SLR cameras.

Representative image. Courtesy: Getty

Camera-making major Nikon is said to be ditching making SLR cameras in favour of mirrorless cameras. The company will withdraw from the once-coveted single-lens reflex models amid stiff competition from smartphone cameras, says a report by Nikkei Asia. 

The Minato City, Tokyo-headquartered camera major now plans to focus resources on mirrorless cameras, which have become mainstream products on the back of more advanced digital technologies. Its cameras have been losing out to smartphones, which increasingly feature powerful cameras. Nikon aims to beat them by offering products with more unique features, the report added.

After Canon, Nikon is the second biggest manufacturer of SLR cameras.

Nikon unveiled its flagship D6 SLR camera in June 2020 and after that, it has not released any new SLR cameras in the market, thus, indicating growing competition from smartphone cameras which are becoming more capable day by day. Nikon has already stopped the development of compact digital cameras.

Even though Nikon will shift its focus on digital mirrorless cameras but it will continue to produce and distribute the existing SLR lineup of cameras.

Earlier in October 2021, the Japanese imaging giant had unveiled its full-frame (Nikon FX-format) Z series mirrorless camera Nikon Z 9 in India. The new Z 9 body only went on sale across Nikon Authorized Store in India at the end of November 2021 for Rs 4,75,995.

According to the company, the Z 9 features the world's largest variety of simultaneous subject detection among mirrorless cameras, with its tenacious autofocus (AF) offering, and the Real-Live Viewfinder without a blackout period. The Nikon Z 9 can also continuously shoot at 20fps to capture over 1,000 frames in JPEG or RAW formats, even when flicker reduction is turned on.