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| DSLR sales continue to decline, but great news: the overall camera market seems to be stabilizing. |
The latest figures released by the Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA) show that the total camera market remained mostly steady year-on-year for the month of April, and that mirrorless sales are growing against a decline in the number of DSLRs sold. CIPA’s data demonstrates that its member companies produced almost the same number of cameras this April as they did in April 2016, but that they were worth fractionally more.
During the period from January to the end of April CIPA members actually produced more cameras than they did in the same period last year, and even though the difference was only 3-4% by volume and value, it is still very positive news.
The decline in the Japanese market rather drags the worldwide shipping figures down from 8.4% by value, when Japan is excluded, to just under 4% when looking at the whole world. Outside of Japan the market grew year-on-year for the period Jan-April by 3% by volume and 12% by value, indicating the cameras being shipped are higher in price than last year.
While the interchangeable lens camera market grew by 7.4% in volume and 4.5% in value for the month, the bulk of that growth came from the ‘non-reflex’ sector. CIPA includes mirrorless cameras, compact system cameras and rangefinder cameras in these figures, though without the membership of Leica or Hasselblad we can assume that most of the category is compact system and other mirrorless cameras that have interchangeable lenses – such as Fujifilm’s GFX.
This non-reflex category jumped in value by 37.5% in Japan but in the rest of the world that growth hit 80.5%. An area designated by CIPA as ‘Other’, that doesn’t include Asia, Europe, Japan or the Americas, saw mirrorless growth of 141% by volume and 136.5% by value – though the actual figures are relatively small. Asia remains by far the largest market for these cameras and sold almost as many bodies as Japan, Europe and America combined.
While only 89% of last April’s SLRs shipped this April, the worldwide market for these cameras is still just less than twice the size of the mirrorless segment, though in Japan the value of DSLR market was only 57% of what was managed last April – a really significant drop.
The good news, of course, is that the market didn’t shrink.
For more information see the CIPA website.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)