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Archive 2019 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

snapsy
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p.3 #1 · p.3 #1 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

Steve Spencer wrote:
The decline in ILCs is small, just 1.5% last year in dollars, but the decline in point and shoot cameras is huge, 35% last year. The market has stabilized for ILCs and except for the very low end I think will remain pretty stable.

Steve, were did you get those revenue/dollar stats? Based on the CIPA 2018 and 2019 stats, unit sales of ILCs dropped 53% YoY (798,014 -> 521,217) and sales measured in Yen dropped 41% (41,193,465 -> 29,077,798, in 1,000 Yen).

Apr 11, 2019 at 04:58 PM

Steve Spencer
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p.3 #2 · p.3 #2 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

technic wrote:
That remains to be seen because the trend is smaller sales numbers but more expensive ILC cameras; I doubt things will stay like that especially when the current "easy money" climate changes and/or the real economy becomes relevant again.

My interpretation is different. The low end of ILC market is decreasing, but that was people who bought a DSLR and the kit lens and never bought anything else, which at one time was a surprisingly big portion ILC buyers. Those people not surprisingly like point and shoot buyers are finding a cell phone does most of what they are looking for. In contrast it appears from lens sales anyway that some of those who bought APS-C and M4/3rds in the past are now stepping up to buy FF cameras and lenses and spending a bit more. So, the FF market and especially the higher end of it has grown. Also a third factor is that we are beginning to see some people move from FF to 44X33 sensors. These medium format cameras which also seems to be a growing market are not included in the CIPA numbers. From such an analysis I believe we can see two fundamentally different trends, one is quite certain and one is fairly speculative. First, a huge portion (upwards of 90%) of what used to be the low end camera market has totally disappeared as these users now are happy to use their phones. This is becoming clearer and clearer each year. This trend is quite clear and has mostly happened and it doesn't matter whether we are looking at built in lens cameras of which only a tiny fraction now sell compared to what they did just 10 years ago or the low end of ILC cameras in which people only bought the kit lens. That market is now gone. The other trend which is still fairly speculative is that the higher end of the ILC market is healthy and it looks like it will be at least as big as it was the film photography. This market may be growing slightly and may be moving to more expensive gear.

Apr 11, 2019 at 05:51 PM

Steve Spencer
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p.3 #3 · p.3 #3 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

snapsy wrote:
Steve, were did you get those revenue/dollar stats? Based on the CIPA 2018 and 2019 stats, unit sales of ILCs dropped 53% YoY (798,014 -> 521,217) and sales measured in Yen dropped 41% (41,193,465 -> 29,077,798, in 1,000 Yen).

Here is the relevant chart:

http://www.cipa.jp/stats/documents/e/d-2018_e.pdf

Looking under total shipments for interchangeable lens cameras we see year on year growth of 92.8% for units and 98.5% for value in yen. These are the numbers for all of 2018. The links you provided are for only the months of January and February and are never very stable. Your math is also a bit off as it is 35% drop in unit sales not 53%, but it also has to be adjusted for the different number of days between the years (2018 was a leap year). Column 4 in your table provides the better estimate of change in sales over the same period and suggest a 27.6% drop in unit sales in those 2 months year over year and a 23.6% drop in value in yen of those sales in that two month period.

Edited on Apr 11, 2019 at 06:12 PM · View previous versions

Apr 11, 2019 at 05:59 PM

snapsy
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p.3 #4 · p.3 #4 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

Steve Spencer wrote:
Here is the relevant chart:

http://www.cipa.jp/stats/documents/e/d-2018_e.pdf

Looking under total shipments for interchangeable lens cameras we see year on year growth of 92.8% for units and 98.5% for value in yen. These are the numbers for all of 2018. The links you provided are for a single month (February) and are never very stable.

Ok, understood. I agree full-year stats are more reliable and smooth out product cycles. However short-term data can also be useful for elucidating trends. For example, the Jan 07 -> Jan 08 YoY numbers showed a 25% drop in unit sales, whereas the latest Jan 08 -> Jan 09 numbers show a 53% drop, and that's with several recent new major product releases from the market leaders Canon and NIkon. Time will tell how the full 2019 year shapes up.

Apr 11, 2019 at 06:10 PM

Steve Spencer
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p.3 #5 · p.3 #5 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

snapsy wrote:
Ok, understood. I agree full-year stats are more reliable and smooth out product cycles. However short-term data can also be useful for elucidating trends. For example, the Jan 07 -> Jan 08 YoY numbers showed a 25% drop in unit sales, whereas the latest Jan 08 -> Jan 09 numbers show a 53% drop, and that's with several recent new major product releases from the market leaders Canon and NIkon. Time will tell how the full 2019 year shapes up.

See above I edited my comments to reflect the numbers in those two months for a couple of reasons (one of them just being an extra day of sales with leap year in 2018) the numbers aren't as stark, although still not good, as your presentation of them suggests. In fact, the numbers are very close to Jan 08 vs. Jan 09, but I think given the paucity of data should be interpreted very carefully. It is just two months and no cameras have been introduced recently.

Apr 11, 2019 at 06:14 PM

1bwana1
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p.3 #6 · p.3 #6 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

March numbers should be available soon. That will be a full quarter of 2019 data. It is also the last quarter of the fiscal year for many camera companies so they push shipments hard during that period. It will be interesting to see those numbers.

Apr 11, 2019 at 06:23 PM

snapsy
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p.3 #7 · p.3 #7 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

Steve Spencer wrote:
See above I edited my comments to reflect the numbers in those two months for a couple of reasons (one of them just being an extra day of sales with leap year in 2018) the numbers aren't as stark, although still not good, as your presentation of them suggests. In fact, the numbers are very close to Jan 08 vs. Jan 09, but I think given the paucity of data should be interpreted very carefully. It is just two months and no cameras have been introduced recently.

Yep, thanks, I divided in the wrong direction. Oops

Apr 11, 2019 at 06:30 PM

bjornthun
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p.3 #8 · p.3 #8 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

CIPA figures do include medium format, like 44x33 mm, see http://www.cipa.jp/stats/documents/e/s-201902_e.pdf, where it says «Lenses for 35mm and larger format Cameras» in the leftmost column.

Apr 11, 2019 at 06:32 PM

NRKStudio
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p.3 #9 · p.3 #9 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

I have seen this article appear many times, and I think this statistic is not representative of the overall market demand of ILC gear. I believe most camera company’s are now focusing on what they call “value add” Products, i.e. manufacturer’s self made lenses. Now we will see less camera sales volume, and lower pricing of ILCs, but higher pricing of lenses. Thus the camera is more the hook that draws you into the system, and the lens is the repeat money maker. Lenses are much cheaper to produce, can be made in house with manufacturers’ own parts (value add here), and sold in multiples.

Please see Tamron quarterly earnings report on the Japanese market, they are growing and making money. It’s because they have the luxury of selling only value add products.

Thus the camera market as a whole may be shrinking, but certainly not collapsing.

Apr 11, 2019 at 07:42 PM

Steve Spencer
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p.3 #10 · p.3 #10 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

bjornthun wrote:
CIPA figures do include medium format, like 44x33 mm, see http://www.cipa.jp/stats/documents/e/s-201902_e.pdf, where it says «Lenses for 35mm and larger format Cameras» in the leftmost column.

Yes, but most of the medium format makers don't participate. Only Fuji does.

Apr 11, 2019 at 11:13 PM

technic
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p.3 #11 · p.3 #11 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

snapsy wrote:
Yep, thanks, I divided in the wrong direction. Oops

As it stands, without adjusting for calendar days the rate of drop YoY for 2019 from 2018 is much greater than 2018 vs 2017. As for newer models we have the Canon R/RP and Nikon Z6/Z7 - they're not new per se but they should be well within the stronger demand curves of their lifecycles.

Agree that with so several new MILC models from the main players and increased FF marketing in 2018 we should have seen an increase in 2019 and not a strong decrease. Even when the recent decline would prove to be the exception to the rule, I don't believe for a moment that all those who are (finally) buying a mirrorless FF camera now will keep buying them (or those super-expensive lenses) in the next years, especially if unit numbers keep declining even more (which is a sure thing for the next few years if you ask me, looking at the statistics and economic conditions) and unit price keeps going up.

Maybe it doesn't matter for the average US consumer, but in many parts of the world those FF MILC cameras are seen as awfully expensive by the average photographer, even the cheapest ones (that offer very little extra over a current DSLR, like RP compared to 6D2) are only at the price level of enthusiast DSLRs.

Apr 12, 2019 at 03:50 AM

vdo1
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p.3 #12 · p.3 #12 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

Steve Spencer wrote:
See above I edited my comments to reflect the numbers in those two months for a couple of reasons (one of them just being an extra day of sales with leap year in 2018) the numbers aren't as stark, although still not good, as your presentation of them suggests. In fact, the numbers are very close to Jan 08 vs. Jan 09, but I think given the paucity of data should be interpreted very carefully. It is just two months and no cameras have been introduced recently.

Also there wasn't any Boxing Day or Christmas during these 2 months.

Apr 12, 2019 at 03:57 AM

technic
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p.3 #13 · p.3 #13 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

charles.K wrote:
Totally agree! The smart phone revolution combined with social media has made image/video taking within the reach of everyone. Growing up I remembered taking shots and then waiting a week for them to be developed. We would then cull the images and send them via mail to family and friends and place the better shots in an album. The process was very strung out and the ability to share was only as good the mail service.

In spite of the CIPA data, image/videos capturing and sharing has never been so strong!

Sharing is stronger than ever, but at the cost of the time/attention people spend looking at a picture, which has probably never been lower (as a direct result of the epic flood of images on social media). Also looking at image hosting websites it seems that the quality of the sharing has gone down the drain over the last 10-15 years (from true photography discussions and comments then to a casual like or bot comment now ...). That may be just the way it is, but I guess over time it could have a strong negative influence on photography and cameras (like many users becoming disappointed with or uninterested in photography) and only the real photography enthusiasts will remain (and buy a new ILC from time to time), similar to how it was before the nineties or so.

Apr 12, 2019 at 06:15 AM

Steve Spencer
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p.3 #14 · p.3 #14 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

1bwana1 wrote:
March numbers should be available soon. That will be a full quarter of 2019 data. It is also the last quarter of the fiscal year for many camera companies so they push shipments hard during that period. It will be interesting to see those numbers.

Or we could go back and add the last 4 months from 2018 so we have at least a 6 month window. If we do so, we see these are the year over year dollars in sales over those 6 months:

Sept - 102%
Oct - 105%
November - 95%
December - 101%
January - 82%
February - 71%

total period - 95%

So, when you look over the last six months that we have data we see that there are three months in which camera sales grew and three months in which they shrank, and overall there was a modest shrinking of the market of 5% and it sure looks like the longer trend as well with growth in mirrorless every month (Sept 152%, Oct 159%, Nov 123%, Dec 169%, Jan 112%, and February 103%) and dramatic decreases in sales of DSLRs every month (Sept 74%, Oct 74%, Nov 74%, Dec 62%, Jan 61%, Feb 51%). No question February was a very bad month for camera sales and January wasn't very good either, but that is over a two month period which isn't very long to try to decipher a trend. March data will help, but I think we will need several more months before we can draw any clear inferences.

Apr 12, 2019 at 07:41 AM

chez
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p.3 #15 · p.3 #15 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

Steve Spencer wrote:
Or we could go back and add the last 4 months from 2018 so we have at least a 6 month window. If we do so, we see these are the year over year dollars in sales over those 6 months:

Sept - 102%
Oct - 105%
November - 95%
December - 101%
January - 82%
February - 71%

total period - 95%

So, when you look over the last six months that we have data we see that there are three months in which camera sales grew and three months in which they shrank, and overall there was a...Show more →

I wonder how much of that growth at the end of 2018 was the result of the hype of the new mirrorless cameras from Canon and Nikon...and now in Jan / Feb...back to reality.

Apr 12, 2019 at 08:08 AM

Steve Spencer
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p.3 #16 · p.3 #16 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

chez wrote:
I wonder how much of that growth at the end of 2018 was the result of the hype of the new mirrorless cameras from Canon and Nikon...and now in Jan / Feb...back to reality.

Well here are the six month before that:

Total ILC sales

March - 103%
April - 118%
May - 92%
June - 92%
July - 88%
August - 89%

Mirrorless salse

March - 122%
April - 156%
May - 85%
June - 88%
July - 111%
August - 120%

It looks to me looking back that the growth in the end of 2018 isn't that different from the growth in the beginning of 2018, just May and June last year were pretty bad months for mirrorless. Actually, considerably worse than this January and even February for mirrorless. What I think we are seeing since Canon and Nikon announced their FF mirrorless cameras is not so much a strong increase in growth of mirrorless (although that seems somewhat true) but more that DSLRs are in a steep decline dropping at least 25% over each of the last 6 months.

Here at the March to August numbers for DSLR sales:

March - 92%
April - 95%
May - 97%
June - 95%
July - 75%
August - 76%

So last July was the turning point with a huge decline in DSLR sales which has continued unabated since then and if anything is getting stronger. Both Canon and Nikon announced they were entering the full frame mirrorless market about a year ago. There did not seem to be an immediate effect on DSLR sales, but by July the DSLR market started tanking and has decline unabated since then.

Apr 12, 2019 at 09:17 AM

bjornthun
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p.3 #17 · p.3 #17 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

Steve Spencer wrote:
Yes, but most of the medium format makers don't participate. Only Fuji does.

That’s true. Medium format (from Fuji) will also add more to the value part than to the numbers part in the lens statistics, compared to the FF and crop formats.

Apr 12, 2019 at 09:19 AM

snapsy
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p.3 #18 · p.3 #18 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

I wanted to get a fuller view of the data so I manually copied over each month's stats for ILC shipments and created the following two charts from the data:
https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-xSrqbgL/0/8c93c7e0/X2/i-xSrqbgL-X2.png
https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-jGZKPxf/0/5fe2419e/X2/i-jGZKPxf-X2.png
https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-gKqVQ44/0/6b802890/X2/i-gKqVQ44-X2.png

Apr 12, 2019 at 09:39 AM

1bwana1
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p.3 #19 · p.3 #19 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

Per those charts the trend is strongly down in units. Also, the Jan/Feb results seem to be reasonably strong predictors of full year results. 2019 is not looking good.

I wish we had numbers broken out for FF, Mirrorless, Dollars, and Brands. We will likely get that data in the Quarterly, and Fiscal Year End numbers that will be coming.

Apr 12, 2019 at 10:29 AM

Steve Spencer
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p.3 #20 · p.3 #20 · Latest CIPA February 2019 report trend

1bwana1 wrote:
Per those charts the trend is strongly down in units. Also, the Jan/Feb results seem to be reasonably strong predictors of full year results. 2019 is not looking good.

I wish we had numbers broken out for FF, Mirrorless, Dollars, and Brands. We will likely get that data in the Quarterly, and Fiscal Year End numbers that will be coming.

That to me is an odd way to characterize the data. The first and obvious trend is that there is a huge drop from 2012 and 2013 to 2014. That is the biggest trend in the data by far. If you go back four more years before that what you see is 2011, 2012 and 2013 are the aberration and 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 look a lot like 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017. So, if you want to analyze trends the big trend is that those years are different from everything else in the last decade. So, let's start there.

In fact let's compare 2009 to 2019 in January and February. Units of ILCs shipped in 2009: Jan, 327,365; Feb, 408,076 to 2019: Jan, 546,188; Feb, 521,217. So, if you consider the last ten years units of ILC have increased over 20%, and if we consider the cost of the cameras in 2009 and 2019 we see the growth in dollars spend on cameras has been even bigger. It is just hard to appreciate that growth because of the huge and in hindsight completely unsustainable growth 6 to 8 years ago. Will camera sales drop further? I would not be surprised if they did a little, but there are forces pulling the other direction like the growing middle class in Asia.

Second Jan and Feb are in fact the worst predictors of sales for the year of any month. Just look at the line graphs the data in those years is the most similar. They don't even do a very good job of predicting that huge trend for much larger sales in 2012 and 2013 and in fact every other month does a much better job of predicting that most dominate trend.

I think we need to be very careful interpreting the Jan and Feb data. Perhaps we will have a market that is only that size, but if we do keep in mind that is still a 20% growth over 2009 as highlighted above. We will see where the market settles but we also need to consider price per unit when considering the health of the industry. As in:

Third although unit sales are a very important metric it is also clear that another metric has gone up over the last few years (per unit price). So, although it cannot explain the biggest trend (the huge increase in sales in 2012 and 2013) the increase in money being spend does offset to at least some extent the much smaller decrease in sales that we have seen between 2014 and now.

Finally, the data is available to do the breakdowns that you ask about all you have to do is look under digital cameras at the CIPA website. All the data is there.

Here is the link:

http://www.cipa.jp/stats/dc_e.html

Edited on Apr 12, 2019 at 11:34 AM · View previous versions

Apr 12, 2019 at 11:14 AM

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