Compact cameras sales continue to skyrocket – but how much are tariffs really impacting shipments to the US?

Compact cameras have been showing a resurgence in popularity – and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. The latest numbers from Japan's Camera and Imaging Products Association hint that the compact camera trend is still going strong. But the numbers also offer the first concrete look at how tariffs may be impacting camera availability.

The CIPA data for April 2025 shows that cameras with built-in lenses shipped 116.6 percent more than the same time frame the previous year and 108.3 percent compared to the previous month. For the first four months of 2025, compact camera shipments are up 111.2 percent over 2024’s first few months.

But that upward trend starts to change when looking at those numbers separated by region. Camera shipments overall to the Americas were 85.8 percent of the previous month, although still up 15.2 percent compared to April 2024.

In all the categories, the shipment numbers compared to the previous month for the Americas have dropped in every category except for mirrorless cameras, which remained steady at 101.3 percent.

Compact camera shipments to the Americas were just 67.4 percent compared to the previous month, although up 107.2 percent compared to the same time frame last year.

DSLRs were just 65.5 percent of the previous month’s numbers, but that rate nearly matches the worldwide decline in DSLR shipments at 66.7 percent compared to the previous month and 61.7 percent compared to the same month last year.

The CIPA report contains only numbers, without speculating on the cause of those changes, and includes both North and South America in one category. But I suspect the reduced shipments to the Americas are heavily influenced by the new reciprocal tariffs in the US, which went into effect on April 5.

While the original reciprocal rate varied by country, the rate was temporarily paused at 10 percent on April 10, excluding China. Tariffs increased the cost of import taxes on cameras by 145 percent on goods from China, a rate that has since been temporarily reduced to 30 percent.

Another set of CIPA numbers that will be interesting to see play out is the number of cameras separated by sensor size, a statistic that the organization has only recently started tracking. The shipments of full-frame or larger cameras were up by 159.7 percent compared to the previous month, and cameras with sensors smaller than full frame were also up, but by 116.9. As a new part of CIPA tracking, numbers compared to the previous year aren’t available. Those numbers include only interchangeable lens cameras, not fixed lens compacts.

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