Now you are the one playing with words: I never claimed anything abut the prices specifically of "higher end mirrorless camera", and your original claim which I disagree with was about prices of mirrorless system cameras as a whole, with no limitation to "higher end" ones either then or when you listed your selected price comparisons.
Where I disagree with you is that the sales record of mirrorless system cameras as a whole, from the entry level up (where the majority of sales probably are) can be explained by looking at only the prices of the "higher end" models. I could play that game the other way around, by claiming that the lower end DSLRs do not compete with those higher level mirrorless models, because the latter tend to have weather sealing, a VF image that is far larger, and far easier to see in low light conditions, and that can be magnified for more accurate manual focusing ...
See how easy this silly comparisons game is if one declares that the differences in favor of one alternative are decisive while ignoring or dismissing the differences that favor of the other?
Look at it this way: AFAIK, when Olympus, Panasonic, Sony etc. were making SSLRs, the sales advantage of Canon and Nikon was even greater than it is now. If so, the difference DSLR vs CSC seems irrelevant: the phenomenon is adequately explained by Canon and Nikon's "brand strength" alone --- combed with what seem to be deliberately "restrained" attempts at mirrorless systems from the three remaining SLR makers (Canon, Nikon and Pentax).
Sorry if I wasn't clear in my initial statement, I always had in mind higher end mirrorless as I clarified a few posts ago, just after I saw your answer in fact. If you go back, you'll see that the models I listed are all high end, my point has always been the same.
You were surprised by this and I clarified my intent.
My comment is valid for high end mirrorless because my view is that many of the photographers upgrading from compact digital naturally tend to consider them first since they feel closer to DSLRs.
I agree that mirrorless did eat some sales away from Canon and Nikon, but the whole point of this thread IMHO is that they did a much smaller dent than could have been expected.
You seem to see my comments as not acknowledging the value of mirrorless but that it is not my point (I do think many of them are excellent photographic tools). I am only trying to put myself in the shoes of those people likely to grow the market. Where does my information come from? From people around me in Japan and central Europe. Most of them don't care much about the size of the viewfinder or about the ability to get perfect focus on static objects thanks to focus peaking. What most of them care about is
to see the issues they have with their current compact digital camera fixed.What are these issues?
Ability to focus on moving subjects and to
get a decent image in dark indoors situations. Those who don't have these issues... they stick with a smaller compact digital camera. Like it or not, a NEX5 with a zoom lens is considered too large by most of those guys anyway. Between a little too large with a NEX5 and a little bit more too large with a D3300, many end up thinking... I might as well get the real deal, a camera with a viewfinder (again EVF or OVF)... because that remains what a real camera is for a large part of the population.
And when you get to that point, the DSLR is typically cheaper than the higher end mirrorless fitting in that category.
Final clarification from me in this thread.
Cheers,
Bernard
