What happened to the camera industry in 2018 infographics
Lensvid published their annual "What happened to the camera industry in 2018" infographics and as you already know from previous reports (see this, this and this blog post), things do not look good for the camera industry:
The bottom line is very bad though. we are below 20 million units per year and mirrorless cameras don't gain as much traction as you might think (2% increase per year vs. 12% decrease in DSLR). For the first time, interchangeable lens cameras surpassed the sales of compact cameras (not surprising, to be honest). If you look at the entire decade you see an unbelievable drop of 84% from 2010 to 2018 in the number of cameras sold/made per year.
The lens market is also going down (except interestingly in the Americas where you have a small increase). Maybe the most important thing and something that we have been looking at for the first time is prices (it isn't a direct number - CIPA gives the number of cameras/lenses and the amount of money these products were sold for - but it is not clear sold to whom - since the manufacturers do not sell directly to people and there are sometimes a lot of middle man in between).
Anyway - for what it is worth we see a trend which we already know of in the numbers - in 2018 fewer cameras were sold but for more money, it is even more obvious in lenses - the companies reported more money coming in from lenses in 2018 than in 2017 despite selling fewer lenses so you can do the math on what this means for lens camera/lens pricing and what will probably happen if the market will continue to shrink in 2019...
