WHILE ANNOUNCING its autumn collection this week, Canon Ireland said the company is expecting steady sales in digital cameras despite the downturn, describing Ireland as a younger market with higher percentage growth rates than Britain.

The imaging company is releasing a raft of digital compacts from the PowerShot and IXUS ranges, as well as updates to the higher-end digital SLR cameras.

According to Philip Brady, country manager with Canon Ireland: "Overall for 2008, we're going to be up. There is still huge demand for digital SLRs; there is double-digit growth in that product right up to August and I can't see that tailing off for the moment."

Using the trends so far, Mr Brady says the Irish operation is "not overly concerned at all, we're quite positive about it".

So, will it be a bright Christmas for Canon? "Absolutely. I think we have the right product line-up. It hits all the right points in terms of where we need to be . . . a premium product that gives very good value to the customer."

Canon claims its compacts are becoming more powerful with the new DIGIC 4 photo-processing chip that helps with faster operation, improved face and motion detection and better resolution.

However, Daniel Benjamin, a project manager at Canon, says the gap between the higher and lower end is not closing in too much. "Not really, because the advantage of digital SLR is the lenses, what we're targeting is the replacement market. So, everybody has got their first digital camera and now they are looking to upgrade it."

On the digital SLR series, Mr Brady says they are also seeing growth as users are "trading up" from compacts. "Our units are up, but our revenue is up to a higher amount, so people are trading up to higher models . . . There's a lot of enthusiasts, a lot of people who were dabbling around with photography. What we're seeing now is they want to get to the next level."