Camera sales keep declining, although at least serious camera sales have flattened out (cheap compacts keep taking a beating)! Who's going to survive, who's going to rearrange, and who's gone? At least my prediction is that our survivors over the next five years are Canon, Nikon, Sony and Fuji. I'm not sure about Olympus, and we'll lose Panasonic (but they'll transfer their most popular models to their own video camera division, who'll keep selling them and making successors that are ever more of movie cameras). Pentax will go away, and that loss will be mourned by many who no longer own one, but remember them well. Hasselblad will go, and that will be a widely felt loss as well. Leica will probably survive, but may become less and less relevant to people who use cameras to take pictures - they may even make a model that omits the sensor(not a film camera either), but has especially beautiful craftsmanship for the collector market
Phase One will probably soldier on, losing two competitors and probably gaining one (see below) - their software will keep them going even if the back business dries up. .Samsung will leave the camera market entirely (apart from phones), if they haven't already, and Sigma will no longer make bodies, although they'll continue their successful lens line (what? Sigma once made camera bodies???) - nobody will notice either one
Just my opinions - please chime in!
The Survivors: Canon and Nikon (treated together, because they're actually in similar positions).
In the professional market (the press plus weddings, events, fashion and other things you hire a photographer for, plus photographers employed internally by everybody from universities to the White House) their duopoly is too darned powerful to break, because of things like odd lenses that sell in the hundreds of units per year. Those lenses are far too expensive for a new contender to develop. They'll keep on making iterative versions of fairly conservative DSLRs, and they'll keep selling to people for whom they're a business expense. Most people who buy a D5 or a 1Dx have a big investment in glass, and are reluctant to move, especially to a system that doesn't offer everything they are used to. A LOT of Canon and Nikon pro gear is also owned by the media... If somebody (and note you can't spell "somebody" without three of the four letters from SONY) wanted to take a shot at this market, they'd need to put a lot of money into lens and system development, as well as pro service. They'd also have to offer something (most likely video) that makes pros sit up and take notice ...
Among the artistic photo market (a combination of people who make their living from photography, but by teaching or selling prints/books, rather than by being hired to photograph plus people who don't make money, but spend a lot of time with their cameras), Canon and Nikon are facing a serious threat from Fuji and Sony. Artists can often call some of their equipment a business expense, but they are more willing to work around a system limitation than the New York Times is. Few Canons or Nikons have as much "soul" as a good Fuji, and artists love to put 100 year old lenses on their Sonys. Canon and Nikon still have loyalty here, and Nikon in paricular seems to throw them a bone from time to time. The relatively slow, ultra high resolution D800/D810 series is selling to a few pros (fashion, etc.), but also to a lot of artistically inclined landscape and architectural photographers.
For serious hobby photographers (not making money, not obsessed, but enjoy it), a Canon or a Nikon is the default choice. The A6000 doesn't feel like quite enough camera, the A7II may be too expensive, especially with its pricey lenses (if it's not, it's a logical choice), and they may or may not have seen a Fuji (if they have, they may well own one). Hobbyists shoot all four "survivors" as well as Panasonic and Olympus, and will probably continue to do so, but Canon and Nikon can keep big shares here without too much effort.
While the default choice for family photographers and beginners just getting into it is Nikon or Canon (a D3300 for $400 is a GREAT deal, and a near-perfect student camera), they'd better watch out for Sony's cheap bodies with great sensors. If Sony ever learns to make a sensible lens lineup, they'll be a threat. This is also the group where Thom Hogan's perennial comment about real cameras needing to be simpler and connect to Facebook and friends better makes the most difference. People want to post pictures of their kids, and they want it to be simple. They'll use a damned iPhone with 5 stops of dynamic range because it's social. Nobody cares if the EOS-5D mkIII can send to Facebook through a cell phone (anyone who has one would edit the CR2 before posting anyway), but if the next Rebel does, it'll sell a lot of bodies! If Sony beats Canon and Nikon to this, they may lose a lot of (low-margin, but some of them will be back for more) entry-level DSLR sales.
Sony:
Sony is in an odd position in the camera market, because one side of Sony sells sensors and other hardware not only to the other side of Sony, but also to Nikon, Fuji, Pentax and Phase One (not to mention their big customer, Apple). Sony profits from the whole camera market going up (and they almost don't care if you buy an A7rII or a D810 - they make a lot of money on the sensor either way - they'd prefer you DIDN'T choose an EOS-5Ds , though)... They also have a pretty good camera body business and a rather disorganized lens business. They have a presence in three of the four market segments I looked at for Nikon and Canon, and designs on all four.
They really don't have much of a foothold in a lot of sides of the professional business, not because they haven't got the bodies for it, but because of lenses. Many professional assignments require lenses Sony just doesn't have, and third-party adapters complicate getting the shot, when you have to get it the first time, every time. There ARE professional segments where the A7 series, especially the mk II bodies, are breaking in, but it'll take a lot of work to get at the duopoly there, and I'm not sure Sony wants to commit the time and effort to the lenses that would be required, for an uncertain return (or even understands the lens market well enough to do that). The A7rII is a stunning performer with adapted lenses, including retaining autofocus and stabilization, so I'd suspect that Sony will back into the pro market more through adapters (especially once more really high-quality adapters start showing up) than through really building that kind of a system from scratch. If I were the president of Sony, and I wanted to break into the pro market, I'd do two things (not saying they actually will). First, I'd put out highly reliable first-party Canon and Nikon mount adapters (right there, they'd grab a bunch of pros who prefer, say, a Canon 24-70 but a Nikkor 70-200 - only an A7rII can shoot BOTH lenses at native performance). Second, I'd just BUY Carl Zeiss (Sony could afford it) and tell them "you now make our pro lenses - go crazy, and we don't care if they are 50% more expensive than Canon or Nikon, or even 100% - we have adapters for that - if people don't like the price, they're welcome to buy the Canon and stick it on their Sony body". Just get Zeiss to make a really top-end "trinity", some great primes, and the best series of telephotos out there. If Sony has the best bread and butter pro lenses out there, plus adapters to deal with fisheyes and the 600 mm the newspaper already owns, they'll start grabbing market share if anyone can. Once they start fixing the lens issue, they might look at an A9 body, but their bodies are much better than their lenses right now.
They have more of a presence in the art market than the fast-paced pro market, and fixing the lens issues on the FE side would help there, too. They have a few good to great lenses, a few mediocre ones, and a bunch of holes (including a portrait lens?!?!).
To attract hobbyists, they still need FE lenses at the high end, but maybe different FE lenses... In addition to better lenses, they need more reasonably sized and priced lenses (and a telephoto lens, which everyone's clamoring for). They also need a body or two (other than remaindered original A7s) to fill the gaping hole between a $500 kit with a cheap lens and a terrific $1800 body that wants a $1200 lens. If one or more of those bodies are APS-C (as they should be), they also need APS-C lenses other than garbage made out of the bottom of Coke bottles. They actually have FOUR versions of an 18-200 f3.5-6.3 travel zoom (old, new,power zoom and a silver version, one of which is identical to a fifth lens sold by Tamron), plus two separate cheapie standard zooms and three poorly regarded very low-end primes. Even the Zeiss standard zoom (NOT counted as one of the cheapie zooms - it's $1000) is not especially well regarded. There are a couple of nice primes and a decent ultrawide zoom, but that's about it! Their APS-C cameras are generally not great bodies, but "as little body as we can do to house this wonderful sensor".
The family photo/beginner/student market is the one place where Sony isn't crying out for lenses (their 16-50 power zoom, while optically poor, is at least truly tiny, and makes for interchangeable lens cameras that fit in pockets and purses). As a university photography teacher, I'd still rather see a student show up with a D3300 or a Rebel (or if they really want to impress their photo teacher, an X-E2 or X-T10 with its intuitive controls) than any APS-C Sony, due to the limited control those bodies offer, not to mention a VIEWFINDER (I don't care about EVF vs DSLR, but, dear students, please show up with a VIEWFINDER of some sort...). The A6000 is better, but it's only at the low end because of clearance sales (it's really a hobbyist camera, and it's missing things there). Most of the low end of the market isn't students, however, and Sony can easily leverage their consumer electronics experience to make "Hogan's camera" for the cell phone generation. My brothers have little kids, and I know that they'd start taking pictures with CAMERAS instead of phones if the cameras offered great sharing (probably via wireless tether to a phone). Sony's in a better position to do this than either Nikon or Canon...
Fuji:
I think Fuji may actually be in the best position in the camera market right now! They aren't about to sell 10 million cameras per year (Canon's close, Nikon and Sony would like to), nor do they want to. They have a very nice, profitable business selling somewhat shy of half a million X series cameras per year, including mirrorless and a couple of high end fixed lens models, and they'd like to sell a million some day (their X series business is growing at 30% per year, almost all of it profitable high-end cameras). Their camera business is run by PHOTOGRAPHERS - Ueno-san, who designed the X-Pro 2, is a Hasselblad Master when he's not designing cameras for Fuji.
The jewel in their crown is the best lens line in the business (and the third most comprehensive, giving ground to Canon and Nikon ONLY at the extremes - fisheyes, long, fast primes and tilt/shift lenses). If you want a great Fuji portrait lens, choose from a 56mm f1.2 (remember it's APS-C - it's an 85mm equivalent), the same lens with a unique apodizing filter for spectacular bokeh, a 60mm macro (an older lens, but still sound), a 90mm f2 (if you like a longer portrait lens), a Zeiss 50mm or two f2.8 zooms with portrait settings! They have 20+ lenses, beautifully selected, and only two of them are "cheapies" (Fuji calls them XC lenses, while the rest are XF) - even the two most plebian XF lenses. an 18-55 standard zoom and 18-135 travel zoom, are good lenses a significant cut above most similar lenses (I've owned both, still have the 18-135, and would prefer either to ANY Sony APS-C lens, and many of the FE lenses), and most of the XF lenses are gems as good as anything from any maker. The other advantage of their lenses is that they are all designed for digital, and designed for the sensor size Fuji uses.
The old complaint about Fuji was "fantastic lenses, really nice bodies to use, but that old 16 MP sensor holds them back (it was introduced on the Nikon D7000 way back in 2010)". Well, Fuji's X-Trans magic made it punch above its weight, but it WAS getting old. Last Friday, Fuji released the first camera with their new 24 MP X-Trans III sensor, certainly (from early reviews) the best APS-C sensor on the market, and capable of putting a scare into 24 MP
full frame sensors. It's a variant of the popular (and excellent) Sony 24 MP sensor that turns up on Sony's own cameras as well as numerous Nikons and Pentaxes but it's a generation or two newer than any other version on the market, with lower noise and more dynamic range, THEN Fuji puts their X-Trans filter on it...
For professional use, Fuji is missing a couple of things - one is the "edges" of a lens lineup. They finally got around to putting out a telephoto lens (a 100-400 zoom that initial accounts say is AT LEAST as good as the new Nikon and Canon offerings in the same range), but they still have no fast primes longer than a 90. A fast 200 mm (f2.0 or f 2.4), the existing 1.4x converter and a new 2x converter would go a long way here. I'm inclined to believe a fisheye and a couple of tilt-shift lenses are less likely than that 200 (or something like it), because the market's too small. There IS a Rokinon fisheye, and who cares that it's manual focus (when do you focus a fisheye, anyway), or that it distorts (aren't fisheyes supposed to do that)? They're also missing a video-oriented body, but the hints at the X-Pro 2 introduction were almost comically thick... Fuji rep : "The new sensor has the fastest readout on the market" (hint) "and our brand new processor is fast enough to handle 4k60p easily" (hint, hint), "but we decided not to do 4k on the
X-Pro 2 at introduction, because it's a camera primarily for still photographers" (hint, hint, hint) - still photographers who do video occasionally are going to like an upcoming firmware update for their X-Pro 2, AND there's a real hybrid camera coming...
Fuji's biggest weakness for pro use is their flash system (what flash system)? They finally showed a prototype flash that wasn't completely embarrassing (it seems kind of like a Nikon SB-700 or the new version of the Canon 430), but without a release date. Even once it's on the market, they still need a top-end flash above it, one below it (one of their existing little flashes would do, if it worked with the wireless signals from the new flash), a commander (unless the "little flash" was smart enough to double as one), and perhaps a ringlight.
They are in exceptionally good shape in the art and hobby markets (nothing digital has the soul of a Fuji body or lens), apart from the flash system, and only care about the beginner market where it is composed of students and new hobbyists - there, they lose out somewhat by not having an attractive cheaper option. They couldn't care less about the family photo market, preferring half a million profitable cameras to more at a loss...