BCN+R Has Published its Bleak Camera Sales Trends Report from 2020

BCN+R, one of the largest databases of electronics sales in Japan, has published a trends report from 2020. While the whole industry struggled, it reveals Nikon specifically is in a rough market position.

For those unfamiliar, BCN Ranking (BCN+R) describes itself as a sales database that collects and aggregates actual sales data of PCs, digital home appliances, and more from major home electronics mass retailers and online shops nationwide every day.

While the report does discuss the market as a whole, BCN+R spends a large portion of it going over Nikon’s numbers. While the camera company holds a firm 44.8% share in DSLRS — good enough for second place overall — it holds an abysmal 6th-place share of mirrorless with just 4.3%.

This report comes after Business Journal in Japan cited that Nikon only commands 7.5% of the total mirrorless market share in the country, so seeing BCN+R’s numbers — which are indicative of a segment, albeit a large segment of the total market — is not entirely surprising.

Mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras account for nearly 70% of the entire interchangeable-lens type digital camera market in Japan, so despite the strong showing by Nikon in DSLRs, its very small piece of the pie in the clearly more popular mirrorless type should be concerning whenc combined with the knowledge that it’s strongest foothold is in a market segment that is very small. Additionally, Nikon also saw its placement among integrated lens cameras drop from first to fourth place between 2019 and 2020. Canon commands the top sales position in both DSLRs and compact cameras, while Sony leads the way in interchangeable lens mirrorless.

As has been reported, 2020 was a very rough year for all camera manufacturers. According to BCN+R’s report, the annual sales volume for all digital cameras dropped sharply by 59.6% from the previous year, the most the retailer has logged in 20 years in a year-over-year decline. Nikon, Canon, Olympus (now OM Digital Solutions), and Sony have the largest declines in sales among all manufacturers, in that order.

The chart above shows that Nikon saw just 36% of the sales from the previous year, while Canon saw 55.1%, OM Digital Solutions saw 66.4%, and Sony saw 76.5%. Fujifilm has emerged as the strongest of the manufacturers with 91.1% of sales last year compared to 2019.

That said, BCN+R seems hopeful with how Nikon is positioned to pull itself out of this situation and echoes that it sees no indication Nikon plans to leave the imaging market, as some have reported. With the announcement of the Z9 earlier this week, it seems that hope is not ill-placed.