Camera sales hit highest level for three years driven by mirrorless and a compact rebound

The latest industry figures from trade body CIPA show more cameras were shipped between January and May 2024 than in the same periods of 2022 or 2023. All three years are well below the figures achieved before the Covid pandemic, but at least suggests the industry may have reached a sustainable scale.

The figures, published today, show 2.3M interchangeable lens cameras were shipped: a 9.8% rise over the same period of 2023, and 11.9% up on 2022. Meanwhile, cameras with built-in lenses were up 7% compared with the same period of last year, leaving them 4.2% lower than 2022.

The value of ILC sales grew 28.6% compared with last year, to ¥251.8B ($1.6B), aided in part by the weak Yen boosting the value received from overseas sales. Meanwhile, the value of fixed-lens camera sales rocketed by 34.7%, to ¥37.6B ($233M) which suggests that at least some of the growth in the compact market is being driven by high-value cameras such as Fujifilm's X100 VI.

Unsurprisingly, the shift from DSLR to mirrorless continued, with mirrorless cameras making up 83.7% of ILC shipments by volume and 92.9% by value. This compares with mirrorless making up 78.4% of volumes and 90.7% by value, for the same period in 2023. With the majority of camera makers focusing their efforts on mirrorless, this trend seems likely to continue.

In its annual results, posted in May, Nikon upped its prediction of the size of the ILC market from 6.1M cameras to 6.2M cameras for the current financial year, which would represent a 6.7% increase over the 2023/24 figures.