Is The Sony RX100 Selling Primarily To Amateurs?

There are two bits of contradictory info currently available. First, we have the Sony RX100's Amazon sales rank, which is #2 as of this writing, and the sales numbers that we can glean from the number of reviews. The RX100 has 75 customer reviews, more than the G1X, E-M5, GF3, and E-P3. This after only having been on the market for about two months. It has a ways to go to catch up with the Canon G12 and Fuji X100, but something tells me that both of them shall fall soon enough.

But whereas the E-M5, Sony NEX-7, and Fuji X10 exploded onto Flickr's camera charts, indicating solid uptake among professionals and enthusiasts, the Sony RX100 has not done so. In fact, the RX100 isn't on the Flickr charts at all. I suspect that there is some glitch to explain this. After the praise showered upon the Sony from respected websites like Luminous Landscape, EOS HD, and Steve Huff, one would have expected rapid and significant uptake among pros.

But what if it's not a glitch? What if this is because pros only make up a small number of the purchases. For Sony, this would be fantastic news. It would mean that they have produced something that causal consumers are choosing to use over their cell phones, which have been devastating the compact camera market for the past three-to-four years.

It's also a coup for the marketing department at Sony, since it means that they managed to get across technical information to a non-technical audience about why they should choose the RX100 over their cell phones. Most people know cameras in the sense that they press a button and either a good picture comes out or it doesn't. They understand a few bits of technical info, like shutter speed, depth of field, and sensor size, but beyond that, it's Greek.

Currently, if you search for tags on Flickr, you will get about 5,400 images tagged "RX100." Compare that to 45,000 images for "E-M5," 60,000 for "NEX 5n," and 50,000 for "X10." Those cameras have all been around for longer, but they haven't been around for ten times longer. This leads me to believe that there is some truth to the idea that Sony has connected with average consumers. That's big.