Compact cameras quietly made a comeback in 2024. While manufacturers like Casio exited the market, recent years have seen a wave of new launches that are turning heads, like the Fujifilm X100V in 2020 – a model so popular it quickly sold out and went on backorder – or Sony's RX1R III, a high-end compact camera that features a 61MP sensor.
Now, according to The Yomiuri Shimbun, domestic shipments of compact digital cameras in Japan increased slightly in 2024 for the first time in seven years. The compact camera market had been shrinking steadily since its peak of nearly 10 million units shipped in 2007, falling below 400,000 units by 2011. But since 2012, sparked by social media trends, shipments have slowly climbed, with 2024 marking a modest yet meaningful rise.
