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?
While Sony likes to mention to the media that it is the #1 interchangeable lens mirrorless (ILM) brand globally, its statistics often refer specifically to full-frame. Across all ILM cameras, Canon and Olympus have been Japan's top ILM brands over the last decade, but Sony has regained top position.
While monitoring the camera market over the past year has been like riding a volatile roller coaster, now that 2020 is behind us it can be properly evaluated as a whole. BCN+R, a major Japanese camera retailer, has released its data from the whole of 2020 and it is unsurprisingly pretty bleak.
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.
In late December, PetaPixel published an article asking if it was a good idea to buy used. There were mixed responses, but if KEH's data is to be believed, far more people support buying used than you might think. For KEH, 2020 was a "banner year."
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.
October sales ranking from the six leading dealers in Japan has been released by Phileweb showing the Sony a7S III outsold both the Canon EOS R5 and R6 last month, but Canon still beat out Nikon in the DSLR category.
In what is perhaps the best good news for the camera world in 2020, BCN Ranking out of Japan found that October was remarkably strong for mirrorless camera sales, outperforming the previous year's level for the first time in 14 months.
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.
According to a report by BCN, despite a rough start to the year due to the proliferation of the COVID-19 Coronavirus, the camera has begun to recover in Japan, with Canon most notably growing in full-frame market share and closing in on Sony.
The Nikkei Asian Review's data gathering arm has published 2019 worldwide market share numbers on 74 different industries, including digital cameras. The new data point shows how each of the big three is faring in the first full year after Canon and Nikon released their full-frame mirrorless systems.
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.
The worldwide sales of standalone digital cameras have been plummeting since they peaked in around 2010, but Canon thinks its industry is still in for some serious pain in the coming years. The company believes the market will plummet another 50% over just the next two years.
As camera makers struggle to innovate, consumers are finding little need to upgrade. The market is slowing to the point of inertia—manufacturers need to take a left field approach to stay competitive.