The camera market has dropped by 22 percent. And this is not the end

The Japanese Nikkei service has just published a report on the digital camera market in 2018. Its results are unfortunately very bad. What is worse, it promises to be worse.

The number of cameras that went on sale in 2018 is by 22 percent. lower than in 2017. This is a huge drop, although it was predictable - it is similar to the decrease a year earlier. Each month, approximately 1/4 less apparatuses were sold than the year before. And more or less from 2011. For the last 8 years, the camera market has decreased by as much as 84 percent. .

In 2018, the Canon was best at 40.5%. market, including a 3.9-percent increase in the number of delivered devices. Fujifilm (+1.3%) and Olympus (+0.1%) are also a small plus, with 5.1% respectively. and 2.8 percent. market. 2.7 percent Nikon provided less cameras but still has 19.1 percent. market. 17.7 percent The market has Sony, which, however, has dropped by 0.7 percent. Pentax, Panasonic, Hasselblad and Leica are not listed here.

This is somewhat surprising data. After Nikon one could expect a decline. Olympus was virtually zero, although he did not present any significant news in 2018. I think I am most surprised by the fall of Sony, which not only presented an interesting offer from Sony A7 III at the forefront , it also offered attractive promotions one after the other. It is amazingly good at Canon, which seems to be lagging behind in many respects. Practice shows, however, that the leader's strategy brings results. To count the increase on such a deep market is really something. This, of course, does not necessarily mean an increase in income, because we are talking about the number of cameras sent to distributors and sellers, not the number of cameras sold. Either way, this result is good though.

What's next and when will the camera market bounce off the bottom?

In an interview with the Nikkei portal earlier this year , the Canon chairman of Canon Fujio Mitara, he revealed how he sees the near future of the camera market. Mitara claims that in the next two years the market of cameras with exchangeable optics will fall by half, that is from about 10 million pieces to about 5-6 million pieces a year. This is in line with the results provided by the CIPA organization so far . The president of Canon believes that the market will stop for a while and will not be built in the near future. A good forecast is that once the indicated ceiling is reached, it will no longer fall further.

For this tiny piece of pie will be the same number of companies. It seems that the producers know this very well and try to present as many new solutions as possible, while the number of customers has not fallen to a minimum. Manufacturers are developing increasingly advanced camera models, such as Fujifilm, which invests in a medium format system, with a 102-megapixel mirrorless GFX100 . Panasonic presented its full-frame mirrorless system.

Also Nikon and Canon showed full-frame mirrorless cameras , and as reported by rumors, this year we will see more cameras and lenses of new systems, including the cheap mirrorless Nikon . For Nikon, the rest is a difficult moment. Nikon Z6 and Z7 mirrorless cameras do not make more cameras sold. They rather cannibalize the sale of SLRs, which are still much more in the offer of the yellow manufacturer. Recently I read that the successors of Nikon D3500, D5600 and D500 SLR will be mirrorless. You can see that the Japanese company wants to quickly catch up with the competition. From conversations with sellers, it appears that Nikon users tend to abstain from the purchase decision. For many, SLRs are no longer attractive, but on the other hand, mirrorless cameras do not have many new lenses.

In my opinion, the next year, maybe two, will abound in interesting premieres of cameras - especially from the stables of Nikon and Canon. These companies have the most to catch up in the mirrorless world. It is probably them now that I want to quickly show as many new products as possible that will drive the sale of new systems. For new systems you will have to buy new lenses, which often cost cosmic money. In the coming years, therefore, the number of cameras delivered and sold may drop, but companies may reflect this with a higher margin and the total value of the equipment sold.

The camera market has dropped by 22 percent. And this is not the end