Led by point-and-shoot, camera sales actually increased in Japan for 2024

A few years ago, the camera industry doomsayers were saying in a creepy doom-like voice "we don't need cameras anymore – phone cameras rule... FOREVER!!!" And at that point in time, they were right – point-and-shoot camera sales had dropped by an incredible 97% between 2008 and 2021.

But how the worm has turned.

With the general public's appetite for photography (one of the world's greatest hobbies) whetted by their phone cameras,  there's been a surprise surge of people adopting point-and-shoot cameras. It's actually hard to believe that only two years ago we were reading the obituary of how point and shoot cameras are dead.

Even so, it's still a surprise that camera sales have actually increased in Japan – according to the Japanese BCN+R website.

As my Japanese is a bit rusty, below is a direct automatic translation from the BCN+R website.

"After losing a lot of sales during the COVID-19 pandemic, the camera market is recovering in the post-COVID era. December sales volume was 123.7% higher than the previous year, showing a booming performance.

Unlike PCs and TVs, cameras generally increased year-on-year until around last summer. There were times in the early fall when sales fell significantly below the previous year's level, but they regained momentum in November and December and significantly exceeded last year's level.

Compact cameras with built-in lenses showed particular growth. December sales volume was 132.7% higher than the previous year.

Meanwhile, sales volume of interchangeable lens cameras, whose momentum has slowed due to rising unit prices, continued to fall below the previous year's level since August, but in December it rose to 101.0%, slightly higher than the previous year.

Canon led the camera market overall in December with a 25.5% unit sales share. Sales volume increased significantly to 151.4% compared to the previous year.

Fujifilm, in second place with a market share of 18.6%, maintained its good performance with a 107.3% increase compared to the previous year.

Kenko Tokina, which rose to third place for the first time with a market share of 11.8%, also put up a strong performance with a 256.8% increase compared to the previous year.

However, Kodak, which had a market share of 10.4%, was affected and ended up below double digits at 89.7%.

Sony, which remained in fifth place with a market share of 9.7%, also fell below the previous year at 92.4%."

So there we have it. It's interesting that one trend can result in a flip-side effect trend. Instead of doing everything on our phones, people are actually going back to reading physical books, shooting on film cameras, and importantly for our industry, buying cameras and investing their time and money into all things photographic.