cipa

Shipments for digital cameras are at their highest point since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and that boom is being largely driven by China, Sony and Nikon say.

As the digital camera market contracts due to the popularity of smartphones, camera companies are finding that higher profits can still be reached by selling fewer cameras that cost, on average, twice as much as they used to.

Camera manufacturers have long told us that the future was mirrorless and - as if there was any doubt - Canon and Nikon even joined the party as far back as 2018, yet compact cameras and DSLRs have stubbornly refused to die. With 2022 well and truly over, we can now safely say that it was the year of the mirrorless camera and this marks some profound changes across the board for the industry as a whole.

The death of the DSLR was always in the cards - as soon as Nikon and Canon entered the mirrorless fray in 2018 it was not a case of if, but when. However, what was perhaps not expected was the rapidity with which the sales rug would be pulled from beneath DSLR consumers' feet. It's all or nothing when it comes to mirrorless.

If there was one word to describe 2022's camera sales trends so far, it would be "pivotal." When I say pivotal, I mean it to say that it seems as if a switch has been flipped and the market has turned on its head.

The year 2020 saw digital camera shipments nosedive to a new low of 8.9 million units, down from 121 million units in 2010. It was believed it couldn't get any worse and, indeed, shipments stabilized in 2021. So why do sales appear to be in free-fall again?

The news of falling camera shipments is like the dripping of a faucet. It comes with a regular, steady, beat, and just when you think it has stopped... plink, there it goes again! So perhaps it's no surprise that CIPA -- the trade body for manufacturers -- has a downbeat forecast for 2022, but strangely seems to have missed the good news!

With an implosion of shipments caused by COVID in 2020, the expectation was that 2021 would see a rebound... until COVID hit again. So how have camera manufacturers fared in what has become another traumatic business year?

Canon has upgraded its forecast for the rest of 2021 after it showed camera sales up 34% over the previous year's pandemic-blighted sales cycle. Despite the good news, the company reportedly added that the camera market is reaching the point of saturation.

The camera industry may finally be stabilizing according to new data published by the Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA), as 2021 has is off to its best start since 2017.

Doom-and-gloom stories of the state of the camera market have been pretty common over the past year due to COVID-19. But what if the data used to determine the health of the industry was flawed?

CIPA, the Camera and Imaging Products Association, has published its final report of camera sales and volume for 2020 and the numbers confirm what was expected: the annual downward trend of the market has continued, with 2020's numbers further damaged by the COVID-19 pandemic. But it's not all bad news.

CIPA has published its global camera shipment and value numbers for November 2020 and the recovery seen in October appears to be stabilizing. Though volume has decreased year over year, the value of shipments is nearly in line.

It's been a rough year for camera sales, but CIPA's latest report on October's global camera shipments is showing that the worst might be behind us. While the September report showed a nice upwards sales trend, October has shown a near-full recovery of the market.

The Camera and Imaging Products Association in Japan, otherwise known as CIPA, has published global camera and lens production data through September of this year, and the results show that the industry clearly has taken a hit from the global coronavirus pandemic.

Right on cue, CIPA has released its latest report, showing how camera shipments in March were affected by the rapid spread of the coronavirus, and the economic shutdown that followed. No surprises here: the numbers are grim.

CIPA—the Camera & Imaging Products Association—has released their December 2019 sales breakdown, rounding out a devastating decade for the camera industry with the worst overall year for camera sales yet. But while there's plenty of doom and gloom to go around, there's reason to be optimistic, too.

After years of declining sales figures and the requisite reporting on the industry's "imminent" collapse, it seems the camera market has finally plateaued. The latest CIPA numbers show modest growth in some areas and neutral numbers elsewhere, hinting that a long sales slump might finally be over.

The camera market has been struggling in recent years, with Canon, Nikon, and Sony all recently reporting drops in camera demand from a year ago. But there may be a sliver of positive news for camera makers: sales appear to be stabilizing a bit after a few years of huge drops.

With every passing year, the digital camera sales dataset offered by the Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA) grows more comprehensive. These records are made available to the public by this coalition of camera manufacturers which includes Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm, Sony, Sigma, Ricoh, Olympus, and dozens of other recognizable brands. Since 2002, they've been improving and increasing the scale of their database, which now separates digital cameras into fixed-lens, mirrorless and DSLR categories, and reports sales figures for different regions.

It sometimes seems that commentators are primarily interested in the CIPA data to prove just how far up a creek camera manufacturers are so far this decade. But these depressing pronouncements are just scratching the surface. Here's some other things the data shows:

This month, the Consumer & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) released a new standard to help make better sense of the world of image stabilization. Theoretically, the standard will make sure that all manufacturers test and report image stabilization statistics the same way, so you can better compare between lens brands.

And although we haven't heard anything from any other company, Nikon has already hopped aboard and released a list of CIPA-compliant numbers.