Latest reports from CIPA is out, that doesn’t look very good since the shipment of camera isn’t catching up the stats of 2017 (previous year). However, the data you have seen above is a combine graph of compacts as well as interchangeable lens camera. Just take a look at one more graph below.
Mirrorless and DSLR (combine) Shipment Graph worldwide
The shipment graph isn’t so bad for interchangeable lens cameras. As you can see the 2018 graph is somehow close to the 2017 sales graph. And at the end of months we do expect more shipments due to the Canon and Nikon recent Mirrorless announcements.
Compact Camera shipment Graph of 2018
The graph you have seen above is of compacts camera. As usual the compact camera shipment is going down every year due to the smartphone sales. So, compact camera shipment / sales of 2018 isn’t doing so well compared to previous years.
Fact of the matter is you can’t sell junk products to consumer now, the market is still there for those who really make good cameras.
Camera market is going through saturation.
There is unfortunately no industry effort to widen the market, even though the stagnant or worse demographics make that a matter of urgency.
Essentials such as well illustrated and readable user manuals have been replaced by downloads, badly written and very poorly formatted. So new users remain unaware of the real potential of their gear, because they don’t know how to find out what to do. Those customers will not be repeat buyers, except perhaps of more capable cell phones.
I do not understand either why the industry cannot agree on standardized menus. Even the auto industry was able to agree on where to place the pedals.
Great comment etudiant, it should also be remembered: that most cameras nowadays have incredible features, be it for video or photography, many people buy overly complex cameras with terrible manuals, then because of this they get angry and start blaming a particular brand, its crap, its useless, i hate that brand etc etc etc all because of a horrid manual, the camera is perhaps astonishing at what it is capable of, and they just cannot understand the thing, People like to blame hardware instead of themselves, even where it’s false, and the decline of print media and its replacement with sites that are much sloppier about verifying rumours before passing them on, only add to this, the number of times I’ve been misled by online “reviews” is staggering, I’ve now taken a different approach: I go to on-line reviews to just get some rough guidelines, then I test things myself, for as long as it takes to feel comfortable and I’m not missing something important because “I read online that…” the number of useless “instant experts” on the net is just bordering on crazy, nowadays, and don’t get me started on Utube “tutorial” videos…
The Internet speeds up the transmission of bad news