Canon is planning to expand and modernize its range of compact cameras – but, at the same time, it can't say for sure whether the compact camera boom is real or artificial.
I was privileged to spend an hour talking to senior Canon executives and product developers – including the company's executive vice president and head of the Imaging Group, Go Tokura – at the CP+ 2026 show in Japan.
"It is true that the compact camera market is growing," Tokura-san told me. "Therefore we are going to review the lineup of compact cameras and would like to enrich it."
However, when I asked him whether he thought the compact bubble would burst, he gave an insightful answer.
"Honestly speaking, we are in a situation where we cannot satisfy the existing demand in the current market. In other words, the supply is still insufficient." He pointed at the Canon PowerShot G7X Mark III on the table as a prime example.
"We might see that the market is full of demand for compact cameras, but a portion of that may be due to the insufficient supply. Of course, we are now enhancing our production capacity; once our capacity can meet the current demand in the market, then we will see the real picture, whether this is a real boom or not."
We've discussed many times on this website – and on our Bokeh Face podcast – that most manufacturers, Canon included, have simply updated older compacts rather than releasing new, modernized models.
Tokura-san is very aware of this and says that Canon is working to offer new products that meet the modern demands for compacts – in particular, the flagship PowerShot line.
"What we see is, currently the compact camera market is growing. But this is not because of past users coming back to the market; the growth of the current market is driven by new customers, not the return of past customers.
"Therefore, we will need to start to offer new products that match the current customer's wishes and also demand, which is not satisfied by the current lineup. So we are going to expand our lineups in the compact camera field. But right now, our imminent challenge is how to increase our production capabilities."
The boom for compacts is certainly a perfect storm of circumstances; Gen Z's fascination with retro tech, a social movement to detach from smartphones, an anti-AI desire for authentic straight-out-of-camera shots, an appetite for smaller and cheaper cameras… and, as Tokura-san says, a demand that exceeds supply.
Canon has navigated the first wave of this boom pretty well, refreshing the Canon PowerShot Elph 360 HS A / Ixus 285 HS A to satisfy the lower-cost market and launching the PowerShot V1 to target video-savvy creators. I'm very excited to see what its next move will be.
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