CIPA Report for Japanese Company Still Camera Sales in 2020 - 2022

[VidThreeNorth]

Canon and Sigma feel that 2021 will be the year the market for still cameras stabilizes. The numbers do appear to indicate that. Then again, I thought that 2020 was going to be the year of stabilization. Nobody warned me about Covid-19. But yeah, it would surprise me if they were not right about this.

"2020 CIPA data highlights how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the camera industry"
Published Feb 1, 2021, Gannon Burgett for DPReview.com
"2020 CIPA data highlights how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the camera industry"

 

[cgw]

Never a problem sorting what's in the rear-view mirror. 2021 predictions? Think we'll all just stay tuned.

 

[John Fantastic]

I sincerely hope so, If camera sales continue to decline, cameras in general will tend to become more expensive.

 

[VidThreeNorth]

I do not watch stats on a monthly basis, but I do check them occasionally. Since we are nearing the Holiday season I decided to see how the year has gone.

According to CIPA this year (so far) has seen a general recovery in the interchangeable lens camera markets. Camera shipments grew fairly steadily with exceptions in February and August which were small declines. As for the actual monthly volumes, without calculating it out in detail is appears clear that sales numbers in the last quarter could be enough to result in a year with either better or worse results than 2021, but the current trend tends to indicate that 2022 will have been a slightly better year.

 

[VidThreeNorth]

A semi-spoiler for 2022's CIPA end-of-year report: I totaled the numbers for shipped interchangeable lens cameras bodies for 2022 up to and including November and the number was 5,432,598. What does this number say? Well, it is already higher than the total shipped for 2020 (5,307,669) and for 2021 (5,348,271). In other words, they have beaten the previous two years no matter what the December 2022 number turns out to be. On a rough guess, the total for the year will probably be up roughly 8-10%.
[2023-02-01 added total shipped for years 2020 and 2021.]

 

[cgw]

A semi-spoiler for 2022's CIPA end-of-year report: I totaled the numbers for shipped interchangeable lens cameras bodies for 2022 up to and including November and the number was 5,432,598. What does this number say? Well, it is already higher than the total shipped for 2020 and for 2021. In other words, they beaten the previous two years no matter what the December 2022 number turns out to be. On a rough guess, the total for the year will probably be up roughly 8-10%.

2023 isn't looking to be an easy market to sell into: inflation, rising interest rates, personal debt loads...

 

[VidThreeNorth]

ILC Shipments: Dec and 2022 Year

This post is my final update for the CIPA reports for 2022. My previous posts are almost complete in themselves, so this is very short. The total shipment of Interchangeable Lens DSC (digital still camera) bodies for Dec 2022 was 494,235. That brings the total for the year to 5,926,733 which is 578,462 more than 2021 or about a 10.8% increase over the 2021 total (5,348,271).

About the Graph:

If you have not seen CIPA reports over the years, I should point out some things. First, you will notice that the December numbers are less than the November numbers. This is typical because you are essentially looking a sales from the manufacturers to the "stores". The stores will often increase their inventory in November to be ready for the peak selling to end customers in December. In fact, depending on the region, the actual orders might have been placed by the stores back around September - October. So a drop off in December is not generally a point of concern.

The other thing to remember is that since these are shipments from the manufacturers to the stores, so there is no guarantee of sell-through to end customers. Realistically though, the "sell-through" occurs eventually, though it might be at a reduced profit.

January is "inventory month" so really, the graphs after the January numbers say more about what the stores feel the business will be like in the coming year.

I am skipping "real film" cameras because the numbers are too low.CIPA does not report on movie camera/camcorder/video cameras.

Finally, keep in mind that I did not report the "fixed lens" numbers because I do not feel they are relevant these days. CIPA does not report on camera-phone products, and there is no doubt that camera-phones have taken over most of the sales of the "fixed lens" cameras.