CIPA January 2025 Results – Canon Rumors

CIPA has released their statistics for January of 2025. CIPA is an organization that maintains records from all the Japanese camera manufacturers as far as their production and shipments. CIPA provides an accurate look at the Japanese camera manufacturers, including what is being shipped out, and to where.

Overall, for the year, January results are 6% higher than January 2024. This continues the trend from late last year which showed strong growth in shipments from October 2025 onwards. Usually not much ships new in January, so growth so far is pleasant surprise.

Cameras with interchangeable lenses grew in shipments by 5.5% while cameras with built in lenses grew by 11.1%.

Contributing Factors for CIPA January 2025

The main contributing factor for built in lens growth seems to be China with a bonkers increase over a year ago of 313%.

Americas showed the greatest increase in shipments for interchangeable lens cameras with a 32.9% gain from a year prior, but part of me wonders if that was driving primarily because of tariff threats, and not because of sales demands. Especially if we look at the CIPA data for January by value, where everything including DLSR’s were shipped in, with the total values exceeding that of last year by at least 30% in each category.

• Camera with Built-in Lens – 34.7%
• Single Lens Reflex – 39.6%
• Mirrorless 37.8%

It’s curious, but with the threat of tariffs rolling around the world, it could be that the manufacturers were racing to get ahead of them.

Notable Data

For the first time in ages, China fell in terms of shipments for interchangeable lens cameras, only receiving 94.7% of what was shipped to China in 2024. We’ll have to watch this throughout the year to see if this is a trend, or just a shipment anomaly. But with the crazy increase in cameras with built in lenses, overall China’s total cameras were up 9.6% by units and 13.9% by value.

Japan Continues to Love Compacts

Japan’s numbers are down across the board for cameras with interchangeable lenses. Even mirrorless cameras are down having only 71.6% of the shipments compared to a year ago. But what isn’t down is cameras with built in lenses, as they show an 11.8% growth by units, and 43.8% by value. Japan is getting more cameras, and progressively more expensive ones as well.

What does all this mean?

With only one data point for the year, it’s hard to tell much, except the last year’s trends that we first mentioned in regard to compacts is still happening. We talked last year about how the younger generation is flocking to compacts and that does not seem to be wavering.

Source: CIPA PDF