Latest figures from Japan show highest cameras and lens shipments of the year!

CIPA 2024 shipments of digital cameras.

Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA to its friends), the Japanese photography trade organization, has published its latest camera shipping data. The latest available figures are for October 2024, and tots up the figures for total shipments of interchangeable lens cameras (ILCs) and compact cameras, as well as lenses.

The combined camera shipment shows 2024 to be way ahead of the previous couple of years, with a total of 900,628 units shipped in October 2024 alone – that's a 12.7% increase over the same month last year, with October 2023 seeing 799,184 shipments. It also comfortably beats October 2022, when 831,081 cameras were shipped during the month.

CIPA had previously predicted that Japanese manufacturers would sell 7.41 million cameras by the time 2024 is out, made up of 5.89 million ILCs, and 1.52m compacts. However, based on these latest figures, ILC shipments alone could well be between 6.47-6.55 million units.

Shipments of all digital cameras combined showed were the biggest yet in October (Image credit: CIPA)

Interchangeable lens camera shipments (mirrorless and DSLRs) are still rising, compared to the past couple of years (Image credit: CIPA)

Shipments of cameras with a fixed lens are a little above last October, but are down on 2022 (Image credit: CIPA)

October is traditionally a strong month, as retailers stock up for the upcoming holiday sales period, before tailing off at the end of the year. Between January to October 2024, a total of 7,003,174 cameras had been shipped, an increase of 7.9% year-on-year. Of those, 1,547,571 were fixed-lens cameras (up 8.2%), 4,658,869 were mirrorless (up 14.5%), and 796,734 were DSLRs (down 19.8%). The shipments had a combined value of ¥681.1 billion ($4.5b / £3.5b / AU$7b). You can pore over the full CIPA data to crunch the numbers by territory for yourself.

Lenses too had a strong month, with the lens data for October 2024 showing the number of units shipped (1,047,092) to be a record for the year to date, an 8% increase over October 2023's total (969,285), and which in turn were a 4.6% increase over the October 2022 figures (926,974).

Lens shipments are on the increase too, whereas by this time in 2022 and 2023 they had flatlined (Image credit: CIPA)

Note that these figures only represent shipments of cameras and lenses from Japanese manufacturers who are part of the CIPA organization – but that's most of the big players (Canon, Cosina, Fujifilm, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Sigma, Sony, Tamron, Tokina, Ricoh and Zeiss).

Take a look at our guides to the best mirrorless cameras, and the best compact cameras. We've also go guides to the best Fujifilm cameras, and the best retro cameras.