Image courtesy: Personal View.
The latest CIPA data from September show that mirrorless camera shipment is still growing compared to August. But it’s not as good as 12 months ago. The US market saw a drop in camera shipments while EU market was growing. But this may be just a cyclic event. Full graph can be seen as usual on Personal View.
11 Responses
It’s interesting to see sales falling off a cliff from Oct to Dec. I would have thought this was there busiest time of year.
The Decline in Q4 is probably because the Camera market ist still mostly a retail, stock-keeping Business. So Q4 sales of Camera manufacturers depict what is actually sold in Stores throughout Q1-Q2 of the next year. And the actual Q4 Christmas Sales are actually represented by the Q3 figures of Sales of the Manufacturers.
Sometimes a Sale does not directly mean the product already got to the customer. Especially with very new Products, most Stores order those new Cameras a few months in advance before they are actually shipped.
CIPA isn’t sales – it’s shipments. All it shows is that the camera manufacturers ship most of their stuff out way before the holiday season.
Doh! Stupid me!
The vacation season is traditionally the season when people buy cameras. Cameras were never a big hit in xmas sales.
Basically, mirrorless is flat and DSLR gradually decreasing with minor “noise” and spikes caused by Christmas season. It’s true that shipments don’t tell the true story but so doesn’t the number of cameras sold because even flat sales can mean an increase in revenue if the cameras sold are more expensive.
That’s funny, because the graph at the top of this page shows the opposite of what you state.
It shows DSLR shipments up about 25% from July to September (800,000 to 1,000,000). It shows mirrorless up maybe 10% in the same period (maybe 325,000 to 335,000).
Granted, the graph is pretty rough, and granularity is hard to come by, But there it is.
> It shows DSLR shipments up about 25% from July to September
That’s called “seasonal sales”.
That’s why charts include 2 years worth of data: so that you can offset the seasonal changes in the sale volumes.
You do not compare the data “from July to September”, you compare the September 2014 with September 2013 and September 2012. Or, July to September 2014 to 2013 and 2012. Anyway, the picture isn’t pretty.
Huh? One can compare any period one chooses, as long as both plots are compared equally. If there are seasonal sales every year, then year over year comparisons are certainly valid and pertinent.
Fact remains that the graph does not depict what deadlock claims; in fact, depicts just the opposite.
Or do we just dismiss numbers that don’t put mirrorless in a triumphant light?
If you look at the stats, Oct-Nov are usually the peak months, with peaks being lower each year. Following this peak there’s usually a Jan-Feb drop that will be even bigger this season. Both DSLR and mirrorless follow this pattern with mirrorless being less “noisy”. But if you take the average in any 12-month window, it will be lower than the corresponding average the year before. There will be minor growth in the following two months followed by a drop.
CIPA is shipments to warehouses, not stores. Nikon still has huge DSLR inventories sitting in warehouses and store shelves from 2-3 years ago.
While admittedly a small sample, last week I went into a couple of Best Buys and a single Target. None of the stores had current inventory Nikon DSLRs, they were all 1-3 year old models: D3100/3200, D5100/D5200.
Except at the high end with high margins but very low volume, the DSLR train has moved to the phone track. I would be very surprised to see Nikon introduce a new DX body below the level of the D300S.