CIPA Data: January 2018 - Don't fret the small stuff

We have the January data for CIPA, and while this year so far is under what last year was, it should be expected, and not to cause any significant alarm.

Last year at this time, products that were delayed because of the earthquake were being released in the early months of last year.  This caused an abnormally high shipment volume in the slow months of January and February.

We expect that 2018 January through March will maintain volumes that are less than that of last year.

Mirrorless dipped more against 2017 numbers than did DSLR numbers, but this again, plays into what happened in the first quarter of 2017 more than it does what is happening now in 2018.

There were some interesting tidbits in the data this month at we wish to discuss.  The first is that it appears that mirrorless market share took a large jump in the Americas this reporting period.  This is mostly since hardly any DSLR’s shipped into the Americas.  It should be noted that this shipment volume is significantly low, so trying to equate or project a market trend is difficult at this time. It will be something to watch over the coming months.  It could simply be that Canon and Nikon didn’t sell as much over the Christmas holidays and that there is inventory remaining unsold. 

Americas unit value approached the 50% marketshare for the first time, again based upon the low volume of units shipped.  It should be noted that unit value marketshare has been wildly variable to the Americas.  However, approaching the 50/50 as far as unit value shipped is a milestone worth noting.

As we stated before, we don’t place that much value (no pun intended) on value marketshare as it can vary wildly from company to company to what exactly that is, and the relationship between that and the end user sticker price.

The Americas continues to receive the high value mirrorless over anything else showing a steady higher per unit value of mirrorless over every other region.

Asia continued its dominance as far as shipments for mirrorless.  Asia including Japan still received over 60% of all mirrorless shipments making it still the largest market for mirrorless globally.

What does all this mean?

It’s hard to tell from a single month, but don’t be surprised of DSLR shipments continue to slide this year as both Canon and Nikon place a greater emphasis on mirrorless.  High value mirrorless may be the next battle to be waged as that shows a considerable amount of shipments into the Americas, which is an important market for both Canon and Nikon.