CIPA Data for July 2018 - Shipments slip

CIPA data for July has been released.

Overall shipments have dropped significantly in July with DSLR's being shipping to Europe leading the charge. A dramatic drop in shipments to Europe is quite a surprise, it could be simply a data anomaly and will be over-corrected next month.

Overall, outside of Europe, we're not seeing much different than what we do almost every month this year, with US getting the majority of expensive mirrorless, and Europe and Asia getting the cheaper mirrorless. DSLR's continue to be sluggish, dropping significantly this month mostly due to the shipments to Europe.

Mirrorless shows gains in all markets but Asia, and Asia's dominance of the mirrorless market is waning as months go on this year. However they are still the dominant force in mirrorless, this month holding 51% marketshare of all mirrorless camera bodies. It seems lately we're seeing more and more of larger, more expensive mirrorless hitting the market for the Americas. The timing is right for this as the American economy is bullish right now. Mirrorless companies still have the choice; sell smaller and cheaper units to Europe and Asia, or concentrate on the US market, or try to juggle between the two markets and satisfy some combination of both.

If we look at shipped value, we see that mirrorless is approaching parity with DSLR's far quicker than with units. If we look at overall shipments by value, it's safe to say that mirrorless has approached parity with DSLR's and is poised to overtake. Especially if we consider Nikon's entry into mirrorless full frame, and their drop of the Nikon 1 system this year. Canon will happily continue to sell the M50 and related smaller mirrorless in conjunction with their R system, but make no mistake, most of their efforts will be firmly placed on developing the R system.

Also interestingly we see mirrorless take a sudden uptake in value, around the time of the A7RIII and not as you may have expected around the A7III release.

For the remainder of the year, it's safe to say that mirrorless will very quickly dominate the shipments for the remainder of the year, especially with Nikon and Canon's release of their mirrorless full frame camera bodies. Nikon is projected at producing 20,000 units per month, but they they are 20,000 high value units. Canon will most likely produce more than this, as they have shown to have massive manufacturing and distribution capabilities that they can bring to bear. It would not suprise us to see a one month spike in mirrorless that dominates sales, as Canon ships the EOS R out globally. We expect to see mirrorless overtake DSLR's on value for the remainder of the year, and continue to inch closer to parity on units.

Is the war over? DSLR's still continue to sell in great numbers. DSLR's will continue to do so, and also have the luxury of a large install base from prior year's shipments. It will take mirrorless technology many years to firmly overcome and fully supplant DSLR's in the various ecosystems.