Number Of Camera Sold Worldwide

[Davide DB]

Caught up in work commitments, I didn't have a chance to respond to this beautiful post of yours that doesn't stop at camera manufacturers but opens the view to the postwar Japanese industry. Very interesting.

I had been looking for other insights and found a long article written in Italian on a photography site and it echoes exactly your explanations. This article, too, details the workings of the Japanese industrial model (organized in Keiretsu (系列) pointing to it as a key to Japan's success in the photographic and also in the electronics post war industry. 
The authors of the article are paranoid about copyright. I post the link here:

 

https://www.nocsensei.com/camera/storia/massimilianoterzi/il-modello-industriale-giapponese-del-dopoguerra-e-lindutria-fotografica/

 

What struck me most was a table taken from one of the many sources in the bibliography. Basically in the postwar period until the 1970s, the number of new models of German cameras could be counted on the fingers of one hand while the Japanese were flying.

 

 

Worth mention another explanation on Reddit that I found interesting. Basically, in the postwar period the leading German companies found themselves on the “wrong” side of the wall and this dealt a death blow to that industry.

 

How did Japan come to dominate the camera industry?