Three-quarters of the way through 2025, camera sales remain on track to have their best year since 2019. But, while compact cameras have been a key industry trend throughout the year, the mirrorless camera category is also showing growth, according to the latest numbers from the Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA).
The numbers for September indicate that camera shipments overall for the first 9 months of the year are 110.5% of the previous year’s data. Cameras with built-in lenses – in other words, compacts and bridge cameras – are the category with the most growth so far for 2025, with shipments at 122.4% of the previous year’s numbers.
But while compacts have shown the biggest jump from the previous year percentage-wise, mirrorless remains the category with the most shipments, sending out more than 4.5 million bodies compared to the fixed lens category’s 1.67 million for the first 9 months of 2025.
Mirrorless numbers aren’t growing quite as fast as compact cameras, though, hitting 112.8% of last year’s numbers for the first 9 months of the year.
Comparing the numbers month-by-month, however, mirrorless cameras saw the biggest jump in September. Total camera shipments saw a 124.1% increase from August, with built-in lens cameras at 110.7% and interchangeable lens cameras at 129.1% of the previous month’s data.
The category that’s not showing growth in 2025 is, unsurprisingly, the DSLR. Production is 75.1% of last year’s numbers for the first 9 months of the year and 74.4% for shipments. Looking at just September, DSLR shipments were 104.7% of the previous month but just 66.9% compared to the same month last year.
Currently, DSLR shipments are about 527,000 – which is about 10.4% of the total shipments for interchangeable lens cameras for the year so far.
Total worldwide shipments for all cameras through September 2025 are at 6.74 million. The last time numbers were that high by September was in 2019, when sales were more than 11.2 million – numbers illustrating that, while camera sales are up, shipments still aren’t near pre-COVID numbers.
CIPA has only recently started tracking shipments by sensor size, a statistic that may prove interesting in the future once there’s a previous year’s data to compare to. In September alone, interchangeable lens cameras with a sensor smaller than full frame shipped more than 411,000 bodies. The pricier full-frame or higher cameras shipped over 235,000 that month.
CIPA data doesn’t include every single camera shipped, but tracks the production and shipments of participating companies, a list that includes Canon, OM System, Ricoh, Sigma, Fujifilm, Nikon, Panasonic and Sony, among others.
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