November’s Global Camera Sales Show Encouraging Stabilization
CIPA has published its global camera shipment and value numbers for November 2020 and the recovery seen in October appears to be stabilizing. Though volume has decreased year over year, the value of shipments is nearly in line.
Below are the charts that CIPA has published showing all 2020 shipment and sales numbers compared to the same periods from 2018 and 2019, with more detailed statistics available here.
In short, there are no major changes to sales figures, which is a good sign for the industry’s recovery.
Shipment volume is still down at 72.8% compared to numbers from 2019 and decreased slightly from October, but comes close on a monetary value: 93.2% compared to last year. So while the number of units is down almost 30%, it’s only down about 7% in terms of actual value continuing the trend we’ve seen in previous months that notes while fewer cameras are being sold, the ones that are selling are more expensive.
Interchangeable lens cameras have a sales volume of just 81.4% compared to last year, but an encouraging 100.6% when you look at the value of those sales.
While volume and value of fixed-lens camera sales are down by a notable amount year over year, the numbers for November when compared to just this year are rather stable, coming in just a bit lower than in the previous two months.
The total shipment of SLR cameras was around 278,000 units and mirrorless cameras accounted for a shipment of 387,000 units. While SLRs continue to move, the value of those cameras is considerably lower than mirrorless. Mirrorless cameras are about 3.2 times more valuable than SLRs, so not only are mirrorless selling at a rate of about 1.4 times more, they are also more than three times as expensive.
No surprise there, as this is a trend seen earlier in the year and continues to show that mirrorless is a better financial choice for companies to make when compared to SLRs: if you are a camera manufacturer, not only will you sell more mirrorless cameras than DSLRs, you can sell those greater numbers for, on average, more money.
Because of the holidays, December’s sales numbers are going to be interesting to look at once CIPA has published them. It will also give us a better idea of how camera manufacturers as a whole were able to make it through one of the worst years for sales that was 2020.
(via Digicame-info)