CIPA: Less than 7 million cameras have shipped from Jan-Oct 202

[dolina]

https://www.dpreview.com/news/5597577347/cipa-s-october-report-shows-camera-market-has-mostly-recovered-from-its-covid-19-downturn

And I personally expect November-December 2020 to not ship more than 2 million digital still cameras (DSC).

A grand total of less than 9 million DSC shipped globally for 2020.

This would be the worst year since the all time high of 121 million back in 2010 ('https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/335238')

Will it settle back again at about 1999's 5.06 million? ('https://www.statista.com/statistics/264336/world-production-of-digital-cameras-since-1999/')

In 2019 the global shipment of DSC was 15.2 million ('http://www.cipa.jp/stats/documents/e/d-2019_e.pdf') vs 1.52 billion ('https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-01-28-gartner-says-worldwide-smartphone-sales-will-grow-3--') of smartphones.

That's a ratio of 1 DSC to 100 smartphones.

Camera makers are now focusing on camera features iPhones and Androids will have difficulty replicating due to their limited size. Though these "advantages" may not last long due to computational photography ('https://www.dpreview.com/articles/9828658229/computational-photography-part-i-what-is-computational-photography'). The features are


Larger image sensors that allow for higher ISO and dynamic range
Super zooms that allow 35mm equivalent optical zooms of 20mm to 3,000mm
Better water resistance or ruggedness
Built-in photo paper printing


Even with the limited dimensions of a conventional smartphone R&D money from over billions of smartphones sold annually allowed for creation of


Larger image sensor: iPhone ('https://petapixel.com/2020/10/13/iphone-12-pro-max-gets-larger-sensor-ibis-and-apple-pro-raw/') is now 47% larger than before & Android ('https://www.androidauthority.com/camera-sensor-size-1095299/') made improvements as well
Super zooms: Have been addressed by having more than 1 rear cameras with ultrawide, wide & telephoto zoom ranges
Better water resistance: iPhones 12 now can do IP68 under IEC standard 60529 (maximum depth of 6 meters up to 30 minutes) ('https://youtu.be/Lv1kofMtpFs?t=604') & Android can do something similar as well
Built-in photo paper printing... smartphone makers are smart enough not to sell to hipsters. :LOL:

[ricktas]

Manufacturing around the world ceased for several months as lockdowns for Covid-19 impacted manufacturing zones. So i would not expect anything different. When manufacturing ceases, that reduces the volume of stock available to sell. Also with stay-at-home orders, cameras are not likely at the top of everyone's list to purchase. And people around the world suddenly found themselves on no, or reduced incomes.

I think this had a bigger impact (not just on cameras) than the phone sales or any other matter. Even the graphs in the link you provided show that sales are increasing the most recent months, so like every other manufactured item, sales are starting to recover.

[dolina]

Now the question is will it stabilize or exceed 9 million units shipped for all 12 months of 2021 or 2022?

Or it will it decline further to say 7.2 million? It's been a nose dive since 2010

https://i.imgur.com/ltYzNoA.jpg

[ricktas]

Interesting that 2010 was the year that facebook introduced 'groups' and in the same year Instagram was created.

Suddenly everyone could add filters to their photos and make them look 'professional' and the world churned from the DSLR to the camera phone. Facebook groups let them join topics of interest and forums began their decline too.

[Nick Cliff]

Dolina and Rick very worrying the falloff in camera sales, can certainly see why Olympus sold the camera section of the company when they did and had already sadly started closing factories.
Was interested to read that a Kickstarter company is trying to manufacture a film camera with swappable mounts. This company is having development delays making a shutter for the camera. The obvious question being when do we start to lose some older analogue camera technology if we go into a downturn for a few years now with film camera manufacturing too possibly becoming uneconomic for cheaper cameras.
Am hoping the downturn lasts two years or so then lets hope things pick up slowly after that in Australia. Our food and mineral prices are now increasing with possibly some small early signs of some inflation occurring in these sectors of our economy hopefully helping us all in the future.

Cheers Nick