Cameras are back – why they’ve grown for the first time in 13 years, despite the power of iPhone and Android phones
There is still life in the old digital camera. Despite phones being our main photo-taking device in 2024, both interchangeable lens and compact cameras had a fruitful 2023 in Japan, with sales volume increasing for the first time since 2010 – the year Apple launched its first iPad, One Direction Burst to the pop scene and the Burj Khalifa, still the tallest building in the world, opened its doors.
This is evident from research conducted by GfK Japan and shared by Nikkei JapanIn 2023, digital camera sales in Japan alone reached 1.2 million units, with a 9% increase for interchangeable lens cameras and a 6% increase for compact digital cameras, for a combined increase of 7%. Even better news for the makers of the best cameras: lens sales also grew 4%.
The figures reflect a downward trend in camera sales since 2010, when the market peaked at 10.4 million units in Japan, and before smartphones came to the fore. The revenue growth comes despite an overall 4% increase in camera prices between 2022 and 2023, plus the wide availability of phones with highly capable camera hardware and software, such as the iPhone 15 Pro Max, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and Google Pixel 8 Pro .
A modest recovery, or a new hunger for special cameras?
What can we learn from this positive news? Despite the positive growth, digital camera sales are still a long way from the glory days of 2010, when more than ten times as many units flew off the shelves as in 2023. Year-over-year sales steadily declined from 2010 to where we are today with just over a million copies sold in Japan. However, a revival can only be positive for photography in a camera market dominated by smartphones.
So what gives? In recent years we’ve seen an increasing demand for retro technology and analogue photography, plus digital cameras popular on TikTok including the Nikon Coolpix S6900 and Fujifilm X100V. The successor to the
All of this points to a seemingly renewed appetite for specialty cameras. Yes, our phones are better than ever at capturing everything from punchy portraits to convincing long exposure effects, and enhanced with impressive AI editing tricks; but somehow our multi-function, computational photography devices don’t compare to the ‘real’ thing.
We want to use a dedicated camera for photos instead of a phone because it offers focused creativity and better controls for photography. We also get sucked in by influencers who can take super cool looking photos with super cool looking cameras. The other point here, of course, is that camera sales are still vastly outnumbered by phone sales, and these numbers represent only a modest increase from an all-time low, so let’s not get too excited. However, the romantic in me likes to think we’re falling in love with cameras all over again.