In what can only be taken as a positive development in the world of photography, digital camera shipments were up 11% in May 2023 over last year.
And that’s not all: As many experts have predicted in years past, this growth was primarily driven by high-end devices.
Digital Camera World sheds some light on these recent trends using the latest CIPA’a (Camera and Imaging Product Association) numbers.
The pressures of competition with smartphone devices are still palpable, but we’re also seeing specialization in using cameras for vlogging and other social media activity. In other words, sophisticated creators are opting for Canon and Sony’s dedicated vlogging models over smartphone headsets. All of that, naturally, is good news for the camera industry which often has to compete with smartphones across an array of feature categories.
Digital Camera World does remind us of two very salient factors when looking at CIPA numbers and those are, first, it represents the Japanese market and thus doesn’t give a full picture of the global camera market and, two, the numbers posted during the pandemic era are somewhat unreliable when it comes to tea leaf reading and predicting trends. In other words, let’s not get too excited even though, on the whole, the numbers seem to speak to the underlying potency of the claims that the industry would shift towards intense specialization and high-end devices.
Another interesting point made by Digital Camera World is that the holiday season at the end of the year typically sees an uptick in sales of more moderately priced devices as opposed to the Nikon Z8s and the Canon EOS R6 Mark IIs of the world. But given the delays we mentioned above, it will be interesting to see whether or not there is consistent, perhaps pent-up, demand for these devices. It will also be interesting to see what the new product release slate looks like as we get closer to 2024. All of this goes without saying that, a decade or more ago, things were way different (ie before smartphones).
Any thoughts you might have on the future of the digital camera market can be left in the comments below.
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