The digital camera market has been declining for several years now – a fact well known to many. And recently, the Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) of Japan released fresh statistics on sales of cameras and interchangeable lenses last month.
The CIPA members are the world’s leading manufacturers of photographic equipment (Canon, Carl Zeiss, Cosina, Fujifilm, Kenko Tokina, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Ricoh, Sigma, Sony, Tamron, and Xacti). That is, it is about world supplies.
Compared to March 2020, sales of digital cameras in all segments decreased by 47.8% – from 1,251,002 units to 597,513 units. In monetary terms, the market contracted by 48.3% to 21.76 billion yen ($ 202.93 million).
In March, 276.35 million interchangeable lens cameras were shipped to the world market, down 42.6% from last year. Shipments of cameras with fixed lenses fell even more – by 53.3% to 321.16 million units.
If we consider the mirror and mirrorless cameras separately, 121.28 million pieces were sold to the former (down 33.7%) and the second to 155.07 pieces (down 53.8%). In monetary terms, sales of SLRs and SLRs decreased by 41.1% and 53.0%, respectively.
In monetary terms, the entire camera market for the year declined by 30%. The following indicators by segments: SLR cameras – a decrease of 46%, mirrorless cameras – an increase of 4% (a trend towards an increase in demand for premium models), compact – a decline of 15%, lenses for cameras of a format less than 35 mm – a decrease of 29%, lenses for full-frame cameras – an increase of 2%.
In total, in June 2019, 1.25 million cameras were shipped. Of these, compact cameras – 0.611 million units, SLR cameras – 0.289 million units, mirrorless – 0.351 million units.
