Is Canon mirrorless taken seriously by the company?

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After reading Imaging Resource’s Dave Etchells interviewing Canon executives Go Tokura, Yoshiyuki Mizoguchi and Goshi Nakamura, I really wonder if Canon mirrorless will ever be a serious thing.

Canon’s answers to Dave Etchells questions about Canon mirrorless cameras and especially about Canon’s plans with the system and the technologoy, well, these answers are elusive and vague at best (as they were in another interview with Canon execs).

Some excerpts:

IR […] How do you see mirrorless fitting into Canon’s overall strategy generally? And are we likely to see more emphasis going forward, or do you view mirrorless as continuing to be more of a niche market rather than DSLR sales?

Yoshiyuki Mizoguchi: So in terms of how we look at the mirrorless market, I think there’s a regional variance that we can actually point out at the moment. Different regions have different penetrations in mirrorless market share.

[…] Canon offers both mirrorless and SLR products, and we will continue to do this. We will position those categories in that regard, and we would like to look at the ILC market as a whole to respond to the wide range of demands that are coming in with these two prongs.

IR: As you mentioned the mirrorless market is broadening, and with the EOS M5 Canon is now finally offering a true enthusiast-level mirrorless camera […] We’re wondering whether you see higher-end — if not professional — more enthusiast-level lenses on the roadmap for the EOS M family?

YM: I won’t be able to disclose any sort of future products, so there’s not much details that I can provide at the moment, but obviously there’s a growing demand for the enthusiast-level cameras. That’s why we’re seeing this progression of our camera series, and in a similar way we will start to see the strong demand for the lenses as well, for the enthusiast. We are looking at the market demand and seeing what sort of levels that we’re seeing, and we will probably be introducing products along with that.

Doesn’t sound exactly like “we cant wait to flood the market with high end EF-M lenses” nor it doesn’t sound as if Canon was fully committed to mirrorless (and their own EOS M system).

The interview touches more points (Dual Pixel AF, for instance) so be shure to head over to Imaging Resource to get the whole story.