Canon reports strong sales of their mirrorless cameras

The interchangeable-lens camera market continues to recover from the impact of last year’s earthquake, particularly in developed countries. As such, the pace of market contraction has been gradually slowing on a global basis. Within this business environment, we sold 1.43 million units in the second quarter, as we limited the decline to 5%. And for the half, we secured the same level of unit sales as in the first half of 2016.

In this quarter as well, sales remained strong, particularly for mirrorless cameras. Within this trend, we grew sales of the EOS M6, a new mirrorless camera that has been highly rated not only for its high image quality, but also for its compact and lightweight form factor. This camera was designed to capture demand from people who, for example, are considering a step up to a camera with more features and better performance. Including this factor, first half unit sales of mirrorless camera grew more than 70% compared to the same period last year, leading to overall sales growth for interchangeable-lens cameras.

As for compact cameras, we continue to alleviate the pent-up demand following the earthquake last year. Under these circumstances, although our second quarter sales declined 8% to 1.07 million units, we significantly expanded unit sales of our G-Series brand of premium models that have been well received by the market for their design and portability, which subsequently contributed to revenue growth.