Why the camera in the last two years there is a trend of price increases?

Have you noticed that the people who use cameras now feel that there are fewer and fewer, but why the major brands of cameras in the last two years have a trend of price increases?

According to the Japan Camera Impression Machine Industry Association, twelve years ago the shipment volume and shipments in 2020 is only 7% and 19% of 2008. The big brands began to adjust their business layout early, Nikon announced in 2017 to shut down its digital camera production subsidiary in Wuxi, Olympus announced its exit from the camera market in 2020, Canon closed its 32-year-old Zhuhai factory last year, before this factory produced card digital cameras once accounted for half of Canon’s global sales. And now the top pillar of Canon’s revenue is its office products business.

Just as digital cameras eliminated film cameras, smartphones are also impacting digital cameras. And for the average person who mainly sends social media, the difference between the quality of cell phones and cameras is not very big, or the software to fix it is about the same.

So not surprisingly, the global market size of digital cameras is shrinking significantly.

However, the camera market is not as dismal as we think.

On the one hand, the old European companies such as Leica Zeiss choose to work with cell phone brands, which has helped them to record record high performance in the past few years.

On the other hand, the combined operating profit of Canon Nikon’s camera division reached its highest point in the past seven years in the first half of last year. In Nikon’s most important imaging business, for example, sales revenue rose 49% year-on-year last year, and operating profit rose more than 200% year-on-year.

So when fewer people are buying cameras how is this growth achieved?

This is related to the price increase.

According to data from the industry association, compared with ten years ago, the average unit price of a camera is now six times higher than the original, and in the past three years, the price has also risen to more than twice the level before the epidemic.

In February this year, Canon China announced a price increase, almost the entire line of products rose by one hundred and fifty to three hundred dollars, and even some products rose by 400 to 2,000 yuan last week Nikon also had a new round of price increase notice.

If you are concerned about the camera market you may know that last year many cameras and lenses are in a long-term shortage or premium state, and even the existence of hot products used price than the product launch price is also more expensive than the case of thousands of dollars, some brands have taken a limited supply of batch shelves strategy, some consumers will choose to add money to third-party stores or scalpers to buy.

This of course has the depreciation of the yen, supply chain and raw material costs increase and so on.

At present, shipments are also still recovering. Even in recent years the hottest mirrorless camera or micro single shipments last year is only 1/3 of the peak, but the price increase and a very important reason is the pricing strategy, or high-end, we can take luxury goods to play the analogy of real money and demand for Kryptonian players who are less affected by the price increase and Nikon, Sony have cultivated their own loyal customer base.

But the poor players with limited budgets or no immediate needs will be filtered out. For the businessman, he is screening the customer base at the same time, increasing their profit margins.

Under this guiding ideology, some manufacturers choose to use scarce chip resources first on higher-end devices to ensure the supply of this part or increase the expansion of the B-side business, the launch of more professional or scientific research level equipment and in the C-side only to focus on flagship products.

As consumers, we will feel that cameras are becoming more and more expensive cost-effective products less and less cameras have become a professional instrument, farther and farther away from ordinary consumers.

Do you remember when was the last time you took pictures exclusively with a camera?

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