The Catastrophic Crash of the Camera Market
The excellent site Lensvid, which has been analyzing and presenting CIPA data for the camera and lens industry for ten years (CIPA is the Camera & Imaging Products Association, which succeeds the Japan Camera Industry Association), has presented its information in simpler form this year, analyzing the years 2010–2020.
Summary first: there s that little box that says, The entire camera market in 2020 saw 97% drop compared to 2010.
(That s looking at numbers of units, not profit or gross, but wow, still..)
2020 was obviously the pandemic year, and COVID-19 did no favors for camera and lens sales: year-on-year there was a 58% drop in shipped cameras from 2019 to 2020 and a 63% drop in the number of lenses shipped. Respectively, that s 8.7 million down from 14.8 million, and 8.7 million down from 13.8 million. Pretty bad, but there s no way of telling how much the coronavirus economy is to blame for that. Would we see a bounce-back if