Compact digital cameras ("kondeji") have long graduated from a two-way choice of colors (silver or black). With a wide palette of colors available, what hues do Japanese buyers prefer?

Business Computing News ran that question through its database of retail data, looking at all available manufacturers' kondeji sales data for the year ending in September. Not surprisingly, silver and black still rule the roost, at about 41% and 19% of units, respectively. But those colors may be coasting on tradition; BCN found that pink and gold, heavily marketed toward females, rose steeply over the year to a respective 14% and 7% of unit sales.  

Models like the Panasonic DMC-FX37-P, Casio EX-Z300PK, and Olympus mu 1060(PNK) snap up big portions of the pink market, while products like the Casio EX-Z100GD, Canon IXYD920IS(GL), and Casio EX-Z200GD grab the gold. For the silver, the Olympus FE-320, Canon IXYD25IS(sL), and Olympus mu 1060(SLV) sell the most units. The Canon IXYD25IS(BK), Canon IXYD910IS, and Fujifilm FX-F100FDDB were the favorites of black-camera traditionalists.

Popular for fall 2008, though not yet making the charts, are cameras in natural tones like plum, raspberry, wine red, and brown. Ask BCN next year whether those earthy hues have taken another chunk out of black and silver.

For another look at color preferences, BCN turned its attention to the brightly-hued 4th-generation iPod nanos. From a palette of silver, black, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, and pink, what's grabbing Japanese buyers' yen?

Surveying JPY17,800 8GB models and leaving out the special direct-sales "(PRODUCT) RED" model, BCN again hands the crown to black and silver, followed in order by pink, blue, purple, orange, green, and yellow. (Sorry, percentage breakdowns aren't available.) BCN expressed surprise at the win by black, given the iPod's strong association with white. But the lack of a white nano and a love of matte black by male buyers put the non-color on top, says BCN, which also surmises that silver scores high as a surrogate for white and as a match for the look of Apple's computers.

Pink was introduced in the previous generation of nanos, and, ranking high with female buyers then, has been carried over to the new line. Blue does well with color aficionados of both genders. Purple wins among the remaining new colors. Orange does very well at some retailers, not so well at others, says BCN; green shows hope with its "eco" associations; and yellow, while bringing up the rear, still ranked a very impressive #33 among 684 audio player models tracked by BCN.

Speaking of other audio players (and going off the color topic), one often hears the meme overseas that Japan's electronics market is a near-impenetrable fortress from the viewpoint of foreign manufacturers, who are lucky to sell even a few scant units in Japan. The iPod is one of many examples showing that to be untrue. In BCN's tracking of retail audio player sales during the week of October 13-19, individual iPod models (broken down by color and memory size) took the top 14 sales ranks, with the Toshiba Gigabeat T401S Black finally breaking the i-monotony at #15. Then it's mostly more iPods again for a while. The same for the month of September: iPods on top, that Toshiba at #12, and then another run of iPods.

Don't listen to the naysayers, foreign manufacturers: bring a good product, and the Japanese electronics market can be yours.

More info (Japanese):
http://bcnranking.jp/news/0810/081020_12140.html
http://bcnranking.jp/news/0810/081015_12142.html