We attended the Photo Plus Expo show last month in New York, where we spoke to Aki Murata, Olympus America`s VP of sales and marketing. Among the topics of discussion were the new E-M5 III and his company`s strategy to attract professional photographers.
The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and flow.
How is your professional strategy evolving now that the E-M1X exists?
The E-M1X has completely changed our position in the professional market. We see a lot of changes. The E-M1X is designed for wildlife, birding and sports. After we announced the 150-400mm we had a lot of enquiries and questions from those people, and we`ve had a lot of requests for pre-orders even though we haven`t yet revealed pricing information.
The reason is the size and weight, and also the other characteristics of our system. Very strong stabilization, and now the ability to capture very fast-moving subjects.
How many E-M1X buyers were already invested in your system, versus completely new users?
That`s hard to say. At the very beginning it was mostly Olympus users, but recently we had a `trade in, trade up` promotion, and it`s about half and half, people trading from our own system versus new users coming in from other [brands]. A lot of people from the wildlife and sports fields are coming into our system.
The Olympus OM-D E-M1X is one of the toughest cameras on the market. Aimed at professional and enthusiast wildlife and sports photographers, the E-M1X features a 121-point autofocus system and high-speed continuous shooting.
Do you have a target in terms of market share?
We don`t have specific numbers, but in terms of birding and wildlife we have targets for the number of users. But we don`t know how big the market is.
When you talk to E-M1X users, do you find that they use that camera for one kind of photography, and another camera or another brand for a different kind of photography?
We are seeing a trend with people c ...
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