While it’s not quite up there with Donald Trump and Steve Jobs in the annals of historic comebacks, compact camera sales continue to grow, a big turnaround from just a few years ago.

According to the latest available sales data (June 2025) from Japan’s Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA), the ‘shipped value’ of compact cameras made in Japan jumped by a whopping 40% in the first six months of this year. Fixed lens cameras, which include compacts and bridge/superzooms, accounted for nearly a quarter of shipments during this period (24.4%).

Indeed, 1.05 million compact cameras were shipped in the period, the biggest number since 2021. This is an impressive result when you consider that smartphone cameras have got better and better over the last four years.

The received wisdom was always that smartphones, aka the camera you always have with you, would kill the demand for compacts, but to paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of their death have been greatly exaggerated.

CIPA results
The latest results are in orange. Image credit: CIPA

Several factors appear to be driving this continued revival, including the international success of the Fujifilm X100VI, the Canon PowerShot V1 and the perennially popular Ricoh GR III, much of which has been driven by social media influencers.

The Fujifilm X100VI is small enough that it fits in a jacket or coat pocket. Photo Andy Westlake
The huge demand for the Fujifilm X100VI should boost the value of the compact market going forward

The Japanese economy remains flat, too, with high inflation and a battered yen causing consumers to tighten their belts, rather than splurge on high-end mirrorless cameras and a big bag of lenses.

This is another reason cheap Kodak cameras are so popular in the land of the rising sun, according to Bellamy Hunt of Japan Camera Hunter, along with the Kodak brand’s ubiquity over there.

Other nuggets from the latest CIPA figures

  • Mirrorless cameras are holding up too, with shipped units up by 22% and the value of shipments jumping 12%
  • Shipped units of DSLRs were down 21%, however, with the value of these shipments falling 24%
  • CIPA is predicting 6.66 million interchangeable lens cameras will ship in 2025, 1.92 million compact cameras and 10.6 million lenses. This is a modest but still significant increase compared to 2024.

Further reading

I’m still waiting for Canon to make a retro compact camera…