While shipments across all camera categories reveal a slight dip in the latest May figures from Japan-based industry watcher CIPA, until now fixed lens compacts have been growing 30% year on year, outperforming all other camera formats.
However, for a long while now – at least two or three years – the popularity of said snapshots (a figure that doesn’t even include Kodak, Yashica or other licensed brand models that aren't made in Japan) has been dismissed as a short-lived trend by major manufacturers, including notably Canon.
But is it now time to declare that a steady, ever-growing rise in sales over that sort of extended period is no longer an anomaly? I think so.
So why haven’t the likes of Canon, Nikon, Sony, OM Digital Solutions and Panasonic responded with more affordable, pocket-sized compact offerings of their own? Especially when it increasingly does feel like they’re missing a trick?
I believe there’s a number of reasons for their continued abstinence.
For one, larger, more corporate organisations take much longer to pivot their operations to take advantage of whatever is hot property right now. Look how long Canon and Nikon stubbornly resisted switching production from DSLR to full-frame mirrorless, letting Sony steal their thunder and market share. Or how the once mighty Kodak failed to respond decisively to the digital camera boom and instead faced insolvency.
On the rare occasion that a major manufacturer has responded to the current fixed lens compact camera resurgence, it has felt a little half-hearted and ‘will this do?’. For example, re-issuing a special edition of the existing Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III, to take one example.
All the while cheap and cheerful Kodak PixPro Travel Zoom, Astro Zooms and Friendly Zoom series point-and-shoots are shipping by the bucketload and showing up higher in sales charts than the bigger boys.
Yes, Canon, Nikon, Sony et al originally abandoned production of basic point-and-shoot cameras because they felt competition from smartphones rendered such standalone snappers redundant. But additionally, in recent years their focus has almost exclusively been on ‘video first’ content-creator targeted cameras, AI-enhanced autofocus and tweaks to specification and performance, via which they can justify ever-increasing price tags.
In other words, the focus has distinctly not been on low-end, basic snapshots; the type that are currently appealing to Gen Z.
This resurgence has happened while the traditional, well-established camera manufacturers were looking elsewhere. And, having already missed the boat, the impression I get is they feel there is little point chasing after it now.
Especially if, as they originally suspected it might, the current fixed lens compact trend wanes… just as they are belatedly joining the party.
