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



## dolina (Dec 28, 2020)

https://www.dpreview.com/news/55975...s-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

Will it settle back again at about 1999's 5.06 million?

In 2019 the global shipment of DSC was 15.2 million vs 1.52 billion 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. 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 is now 47% larger than before & Android 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) & Android can do something similar as well
Built-in photo paper printing... smartphone makers are smart enough not to sell to hipsters.


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## YuengLinger (Dec 28, 2020)

You keep making the same point over and over.

We have to ask...Are you ok?

You are not alone with your grave fears:









The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats | Poetry Foundation


Turning and turning in the widening gyre




www.poetryfoundation.org


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## dolina (Dec 28, 2020)

Excuse me. I never started a thread about this on subject on CR, ever.


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## YuengLinger (Dec 28, 2020)

dolina said:


> Excuse me. I never started a thread about this on subject on CR, ever.


You just go on about it in most threads you participate in. It's your trademark lately.

Thank you for taking it the next level.

We get it: cameras are ******* if they can't order sushi and a frappuccino.

Can you find the joy of photography again and stop fretting?


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## dolina (Dec 28, 2020)

YuengLinger said:


> You just go on about it in most threads you participate in. It's your trademark lately.
> 
> Thank you for taking it the next level.
> 
> ...


Calm down. You're projecting. You may want to ignore this thread lest you get a heart attack.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Dec 28, 2020)

2020 was hit by a huge downturn when Covid hit, people stopped buying, shipping stopped, factories closed, it was certainly bad. As November approached, sales started shooting upward, particularly for interchangeable lens cameras. P&S are almost history. Soon, only specialty versions like the 50X or 100X supertele's.

I'd say to just look at the ILC's and things are not so bad as when you include P&S cameras and exclude the months when Covid suppressed sales since they are extraordinary.


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## YuengLinger (Dec 28, 2020)

dolina said:


> Calm down. You're projecting. You may want to ignore this thread lest you get a heart attack.


I will play along. Every one of your many projections is true. The industry is *******.

Now what exactly do you want your readers to do about the situation?


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## dolina (Dec 28, 2020)

YuengLinger said:


> I will play along. Every one of your many projections is true. The industry is *******.
> 
> Now what exactly do you want your readers to do about the situation?


Just discuss and hash things out.

It's a discussion after all.


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## unfocused (Dec 28, 2020)

I appreciate @dolina's post. Don't know why it would offend anyone. And, I'd much rather discuss this topic than most of the other drivel that has plagued this forum during these slow times. After all, how many times do we have to regurgitate talking points about whether or not DSLRs are dead or the price of a currently imaginary R7?

To contribute to the discussion, I've long argued that the huge growth of the first decade or so of the 2000s was unsustainable. However, I believe that both Canon and Nikon fully understand this, as they have lived through previous boom and bust periods with cameras dating back at least to the 1960s and 70s boom times when everyone thought that if they bought an SLR they could be David Hemmings in Blow Up.

I think there is a sustainable, but much smaller market for interchangeable lens cameras, with most being sold to enthusiasts who want features like telephoto lenses that are not easily duplicated by smart phones. I'm less certain about the future of cameras aimed at casual users who want a "real" camera to take on vacation or to shoot their kid's birthday party. But, in the predigital age, that market was filled by Instamatics anyway. Smartphones deliver far better quality than the old Kodaks ever did.

Long-term I don't know. Many buyers are aging out and eventually us geezers won't want to or be able to carry around big lenses. Will there be a large enough user base among younger consumers to replace the older ones?

So far, we have been very fortunate because it seems as though savings from manufacturing efficiencies and technological advances have offset the shrinking demand, so that consumers haven't seen major price increases. But, I think we may be reaching a point when shrinking demand will mean that consumers have to pay more per unit. In fact, we may already be seeing that in the price of the R5, which seems steep to me, compared to the price of the 5D.

Of course, in the midst of a worldwide pandemic it's a bit hard to predict what things will look like when we return to normal.


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## Kit. (Dec 28, 2020)

dolina said:


> Just discuss and hash things out.
> 
> It's a discussion after all.


Cool.

I ordered R5 in August and got it delivered in December. Both my most favorite lenses, 100-400 II and TS-E 17, work great with it (much better than with my 5D II, that's for sure). I hope I don't need to worry about the impending doom of the ILC market for at least the next 5 years.

I could also manage to share a TS-E 17 picture online on the go using my Android phone (Camera Connect and Google Photos). However, I'm not satisfied with the JPEG format save size choices (I shoot RAW only in-camera). The "original size" is probably too big for the web, but the existing "reduced" option doesn't look well enough on my 4K monitor. Any ideas where I could configure a larger "reduced" size?


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## unfocused (Dec 28, 2020)

Kit. said:


> ...Any ideas where I could configure a larger "reduced" size?


Just a wild guess, but you might try Lightroom mobile or Photoshop Mix, which are both designed for mobile use.


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## ethanz (Dec 29, 2020)

Most beginners I know buy some type of cheap SLR (RP, T7, etc) when upgrading from their phones. I think most know that P&S aren't really an upgrade for them.


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## Czardoom (Dec 29, 2020)

I think in the future the ILC camera makers will need to return to a philosophy closer to the film camera days rather than the philosophy of the digital/electronics age. By that I mean that cameras will see little change between generations - or not even have any new generations that come out on a regular schedule. Once the camera lineup is filled out, you might see the same models sold for the next 10 years with little or no change. People who buy an ILC will keep them until the break down and need to be replaced, as they did in the film days, when cameras went unchanged for years. I'm not in the camera making business, of course, but I would imagine the constant need to bring out a new model every 3 or 4 years will be unsustainable due to the enormous R&D expenditures that each company must be spending, in many cases, to bring such small incremental changes that only gear-heads will notice. Will most photographers buy a new camera if the FPS go from 20 to 25? Another 1/4 stop DR? I think not, so sales will continue to go down, regardless of what happens with smartphones. If the ILC buyers - and the camera makers - accept this new paradigm (which is actually the old film camera paradigm of relatively unchanged cameras and small R&D expendatures over many years) then camera companies can survive with far fewer ILC cameras being sold. If camera makers continue to try and outdo one another with a new generation of newer, bigger and better "specs" every 3 years or so, then I think many will not make it.

Just my 2 cents.


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## c.d.embrey (Dec 29, 2020)

unfocused said:


> Many buyers are aging out and eventually us geezers won't want to or be able to carry around big lenses. Will there be a large enough user base among younger consumers to replace the older ones?



Not only am I aging out, but after 60 years I've become bored with photography. I've already bought my last standalone camera. I'm sure I'm not the onlyone looking for another hobby.


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## docsmith (Dec 29, 2020)

First, we should have expected decrease as camera sales have been decreasing every year for about a decade. Second, most new releases were not necessarily "high volume" consumer grade cameras. Much more of the professional, higher end, or niche type cameras were released in 2020. Then, COVID was a triple hit to the camera industry: 1) Fewer consumers likely felt like investing in something discretionary for a good part of 2020; 2) Professional photographers were especially hit during the pandemic so purchasing new gear was likely pushed off into the future by many; and 3) Manufacturing was impacted, so even for the new releases that were in demand, say the R5, there was not a supply. 

As for the future, photography is more popular that ever and there will always be a subset of the population that will want higher quality, more control, and the ability to do more than they are able to with their smart phones.


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## unfocused (Dec 29, 2020)

Czardoom said:


> I think in the future the ILC camera makers will need to return to a philosophy closer to the film camera days rather than the philosophy of the digital/electronics age. By that I mean that cameras will see little change between generations - or not even have any new generations that come out on a regular schedule. Once the camera lineup is filled out, you might see the same models sold for the next 10 years with little or no change. People who buy an ILC will keep them until the break down and need to be replaced, as they did in the film days, when cameras went unchanged for years. I'm not in the camera making business, of course, but I would imagine the constant need to bring out a new model every 3 or 4 years will be unsustainable due to the enormous R&D expenditures that each company must be spending, in many cases, to bring such small incremental changes that only gear-heads will notice. Will most photographers buy a new camera if the FPS go from 20 to 25? Another 1/4 stop DR? I think not, so sales will continue to go down, regardless of what happens with smartphones. If the ILC buyers - and the camera makers - accept this new paradigm (which is actually the old film camera paradigm of relatively unchanged cameras and small R&D expendatures over many years) then camera companies can survive with far fewer ILC cameras being sold. If camera makers continue to try and outdo one another with a new generation of newer, bigger and better "specs" every 3 years or so, then I think many will not make it.
> 
> Just my 2 cents.


Good points. Also, the arc of technology is always one where during the initial years there are major improvements and changes, then as the technology matures, the pace of change slows down. 

Look at mobile phones. Think about how fast we went from big bag phones to hand held phones to flip phones to smart phones and then think about how little has really changed in smart phones over the last two-three years.


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## dolina (Dec 30, 2020)

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?


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## unfocused (Dec 30, 2020)

dolina said:


> 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?


I think 2020 is such an outlier that we can't possibly predict anything based on this year. I would guess that 2021 won't tell us much either, as the first half of the year will look a lot like 2020. The second half of the year might see a lot of pent-up demand that could distort sales. We will have to wait until 2022 before we can get any reasonable sense of where the market is headed.


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## dolina (Jan 20, 2021)

In an interview with Toyo Keizai. Canon Japan expects the digital still camera market will ship less than 10 million units annually.

This is from a 2010 high of 121,463,234.

This is much more optimistic than my estimate of 7.1 million.

Also in a separate interview with Toyo Keizai, Nikon attributes its historic $720 million loss for being slow to move to MILCs.

This is unlike Sony that abandoned SLRs as early as 2019 while Canon was just in time with its move to MILCs.

I think Sony did a better job with their SLR to MILC transition with the 2019 a9 II body & FE 600/4 lens and 2018 FE 400/2.8 lens than Canon because their 1D X Mark III came out in Q1 2020 and Series III EF 600/4 and EF 400/2.8 in 2018 rather than a R1, RF 600/4 and RF 400/2.8.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jan 21, 2021)

They made 1 million cameras in November, so the sales are speeding up.

However, availability of microprocessors and other chips has hit a hard limit and that is affecting every industry. Car manufacturers are shuttering plants and there is a shortage of new cars already. When Covid hit, car manufacturers panicked and cut orders for chips because they assumed sales of cars would drop. That was wrong, sales kept right on but the chip plants started using their capacity to fill demand for computers, webcams, phones, tablets, they have every plant running full capacity and can't make more parts that car manufacturers need. It takes years to construct a new chip plant, that means we will be seeing a shortage for the indefinite future until the market is saturated for the high demand webcams and computers.

That means that camera makers are limited as to what they can produce, they can't ramp up production either. Expect them to put all available components into new higher profit cameras. That likely means no more 5 series DSLR's once the parts inventory is used up.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55704936


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## dolina (Feb 4, 2021)

2020 CIPA shipping data

Total Cameras -	8,886,292
Point & Shoot -	3,578,643
Total SLR & Mirrorless - 5,307,649
SLR - 2,374,569
Mirrorless - 2,933,080

1st year Cameras sells from 8 to 7 digits due to COVID-19
3rd year ILC outsells P&S
1st year MILC outsells SLR


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