Nikon: limping through the dying night of the Expeed 7 generation, absolute radio silence about the camera or lens roadmap save for one giant lens almost no one is interested in. The China lawsuit didn't do much to buoy confidence about 3rd party support on Z either.
Fuji: releases one of their most awaited modern releases with the X-E5, rides the tiktok success of the X-M5, and sees the RF100 be more popular than it deserved to be.
You would think Nikon would have noticed with the Zf but they have always been overly cautious about where and when they place bets on development. The upside is that they generally get it right the first time? I think they are also stuck in their old conception of a pro photographer.
ottokbre wrote:
Make cameras exciting and they sell.
You would think Nikon would have noticed with the Zf but they have always been overly cautious about where and when they place bets on development. The upside is that they generally get it right the first time? I think they are also stuck in their old conception of a pro photographer.
All of these Japanese corporations move at a glacial pace and lack the ability to respond with the market. I'm currently working with one in a totally unrelated industry and running into so many silly roadblocks that simply don't exist here.
The aggregated camera shipment/sales data doesn’t tell us much, and we’d also need to see whether these trends are widespread or driven by specific markets (i.e., China, Europe, US). Furthermore, in 2025, Nikon shipped more units than in 2023 (how many were DSLRs? That’s not known). Fuji’s shipments nearly tripled.
If—and I emphasize if—what the French manager at Fujifilm had hoped for last year actually happened, namely a huge success for the X-E5, then I believe this might be due to the fact that many people now prefer small camera bodies and lightweight lenses.
That’s exactly what Nikon stubbornly refuses to do—now the only one not doing so: high-quality, yet compact APS-C bodies with no compromises, perhaps featuring a new sensor rather than just the same old 20–21-megapixel one across the entire (rather meager) DX lineup...
Then there’s their short-sighted protectionist policy and their habit of suing lens manufacturers—that certainly doesn’t help: they’d be better off spending less on lawyers and more on product development.
The fact that Nikon is actually up some over those three years, it's just that Fuji *surged* over those three years, is certainly interesting. That said, Nikon actually had a couple new cameras to sell in 2025; the 2026 numbers are surely worse since...well, I can't improve on "limping through the dying night of the Expeed 7 generation, absolute radio silence about the camera or lens roadmap", so, yeah, what Scott said.
I don't know which is more surprising - the big sales increase by Fuji, or the drop by Nikon...
Fuji makes very popular compact cameras, I would assume the X100VI is a significant factor in their sales. It is not a cheap camera by any means, either.
It's not surprising that Nikon's sales are down because they haven't introduced many new products lately. They can't easily lower prices, either, as the US market is affected by tariffs, energy costs are up, and chip costs are up due to all the data centers being built. Of course, these production cost factors and tariffs affect to some extent every manufacturer.
Lee Saxon wrote:
The fact that Nikon is actually up some over those three years, it's just that Fuji *surged* over those three years, is certainly interesting.
It's even more interesting that Fuji could "surge" at all, considering they have been severely hampered by supply chain issues and product shortages for the past couple of years. Imaging what they could have done if they actually had all of their product lines available to sell in every market.
Nikon isn't trying to be a one brand for everyone company, to me anyway, and Fuji is. There are certain segments of photography that Fuji is horrible at when, compared to Nikon (or Canon or Sony even). Numbers are numbers. I doubt Nikon is worried that much.
One of Nikon's biggest challenges is trying to convince their aging customer base that mirrorless cameras are not just a fad,
Nikon might not be worried (since they apparently no longer understand the market) but I imagine their shareholders might start feeling a little less complacent.
Lee Saxon wrote:
The fact that Nikon is actually up some over those three years, it's just that Fuji *surged* over those three years, is certainly interesting. That said, Nikon actually had a couple new cameras to sell in 2025; the 2026 numbers are surely worse since...well, I can't improve on "limping through the dying night of the Expeed 7 generation, absolute radio silence about the camera or lens roadmap", so, yeah, what Scott said.
About the Fujifilm “surge” — what those numbers don’t tell us is the actual products behind those numbers.
Fujifilm has certainly had some very popular — and in my view interesting — “serious photography” (whatever that means) products over the past few years. But they also have apparently made a ton of money selling the distinctly consumer Instax gear.
gdanmitchell wrote:
But they also have apparently made a ton of money selling the distinctly consumer Instax gear.
100% this. Whenever I lived outside of NYC in about 2017-2018 I got excited that there was a Fujifilm store only to realize every store event and essentially all of their inventory was for Instax. It was basically an Instax store.
