It’s Monday. That means the New York Times business section runs metrics in their Most Wanted column. One of today’s metrics is on digital camera sales. Here’s what they listed with the source quoted as NPD Group/NPD Techworld:

I’ve seen similar data to these in previous issues of the NYT. It’s interesting that Kodak is the leader in this study. Perhaps these data are for US sales only… however, no information is given on the geography of the sales?? (I tried to find a link to this section in the NYT, but couldn’t find it using their online search).

This article is more in line with what I’ve read about world-wide market share (I had to link to the Google-cashed version, since the original link no longer works). The source for this article is InfoTrends/CAP Ventures.

The top five worldwide market leaders in digital camera sales in 2004 are, in rank order, Canon Inc., Sony Corp., Olympus Corp., Eastman Kodak Co. and Fuji Photo Film Co., the firm said.

Getting back to how the NYT came up with their sales data, this article breaks down US sales of digital cameras.

The research firm’s survey of third-quarter U.S. camera sales, released on Friday, found that Sony sold 1 million units to command 20 percent of the market. Kodak shifted only 10,000 fewer, to grab 19.8 percent of the market.

Canon was third, moving 800,000 units for a 16 percent market share, followed by Olympus, with sales of 600,000 and market share of 12 percent.

The moral of the story is that a lot of publications quote data on sales and other figures without giving you enough information. In fact, they give you just enough information to be misinformed. In this case, the NYT was sloppy in their reporting, since they did not qualify their data as being geographically specific.