An article in Nikkei points out that the Japanese domestic market has grown for the first time in 13 years. Which kind of shows just how bad it's gotten for the japanese marketplace.
The Japanese market has gone from its peak of over 10 million units down in 2010 and has basically been in a freefall since. Gfk reports that 1.2 million units were sold in 2023, a fact that I find interesting considering only 520 thousand units were shipped domestically in 2023. I guess that means that Japanese camera stores just had that much inventory sitting around.
The graph below shows the decline. The graph scale is 10,000 units (a rather confusing graph, but I didn't create it). This is also supposedly sales receipts so similar to BCN data.
Of course, we all know the reasons camera companies have struggled, so we won't get into that here. Some of the bump in 2023 was most likely due to a post covid “bump” where people were not purchasing during the 3 years, and started to travel, etc and need cameras again.
I'm not sure if we have seen the last of the downward market spiral, especially after reading this from Nikkei,
This is the second consecutive year of positive growth for interchangeable lens cameras. The number of products over 100,000 yen increased, and the proportion of products in the 100,000 to 200,000 yen price range was 46%, an increase of 7 points from the previous year. The average price (excluding tax) rose 4% from the previous year to 172,000 yen.
Turning cameras into more boutique and expensive products doesn't really “work” long term to keep people coming into the market. Thom Hogan of ByThom fame used to say Japanese camera manufacturers are doing the same as Japanese high end stereo manufacturers did in the past – and we all know where that ended up.
There is good news for Asia though, it seems that compact cameras are making a comeback as the younger generation is flocking to compact cameras because they feel the poorer image quality is more “filmic”. Go figure.
The top image was from Yoshiro Inaoka who i was just going to shove at the bottom as a general credit until I realized he has literally posted over 18,000 photos, 32,200 answers, and given 1275 reviews around the Tokyo region. That's just fantastic.
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