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Comment by postalcoder | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to pour water on this announcement, but I do want to add context before we run to attach a narrative here. The most probable explanation for the extra-high sales figures is historic yen weakness. Management even point to it themselves.

From a financials perspective, Nikon is a Japanese company with yen-denominated revenues. A weak yen means that Nikon earns more per unit sold in any non-yen currency.

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> The Nikon Z9 is perhaps the most complete camera we've ever tested. It shoots excellent 45MP images at up to 30fps (20 with Raw), it captures 8K video in everything from 8-bit MP4s to 12-bit N-Raw. Its autofocus system is both powerful and easy to use and works well for both stills and video. It's larger and heavier than some of its rivals, which make it less well suited to some applications, but overall it combines the best of a DSLR and a video camera in a single body.

Dpreview summary above. I'd say its well deserved success. Thay are the only major company in this space fully focusing on best photography experience as a whole, not just some side product of photo copiers or game consoles behemots.

The CEO mentioned that helps, but there seems to be more than that going on.

Another factor is possibly pent up demand for mirrorless with all the bells and whistles.

They don't provide unit numbers, likely for a reason. Look at their earnings presentation. If you go purely on camera unit sales, this wasn't even their best selling year (trailing twelve months) for cameras on a unit basis in the past 5 years. https://www.nikon.com/company/ir/ir_library/result/pdf/2025/...

This is shoddy journalism. What was discussed in MD&A does not support the article's headline.

The headline is literally a quote from Nikon's own website. How is that shoddy journalism?

It's not. "Highest number of sales" can mean either "highest revenue" or "most units sold". The author ran with "Nikon Sold More Z9 Cameras than..." when that's 1. not what management said and 2. there's good reason to believe that they're referring to revenue when reading the statement in the context of the release.

"Flagship" cameras besides the Sony A1 aren't all-rounders, they're historically fast and rugged big bodies for shooting sports. The Z9 was very forward looking in this category in 2021 (shutterless design, speedy sensor readout) and is still very competitive.

Sports, weddings, other commercial stuff, sure. "Pent up demand" doesn't mean consumer demand though, could be lots of nikon invested folks that were waiting for the first post SLR one.

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