China Online Compact Camera Sales Grew 58%, Mostly on Price
By Jotham Lim
7 min read
China's online sales of compact digital cameras grew +58% like for like in the year to August 2026 across three of China's largest marketplaces, according to Moojing Market Intelligence, mostly because the average price rose from CN¥ 1,124 to CN¥ 1,626, while instant cameras held level after a strong year and MP3 players and board games fell.
This article covers the fourth chapter of the full report, China's Analogue Economy, which looks at the retro devices that fill the Western analog bag, from compact and instant cameras to MP3 players and feature phones, and compares China with the United States wherever the two can be measured.
Key figures
- +58%: like-for-like growth in online sales of compact digital cameras, September 2025 to August 2026
- CN¥ 8.78 billion: their online sales in the latest year, from CN¥ 5.60 billion and CN¥ 2.69 billion in the two years before
- CN¥ 1,626: their average price in the latest year, up from CN¥ 1,124
- +34%: CIPA's figure for compact-camera shipments to the Americas over the same twelve months, in units
Method and scope: observed online sales across three of China's largest marketplaces, September 2023 to August 2026, from Moojing Market Intelligence; not the total market. Growth rates are like for like; annual totals use the full joined series.
Why are compact camera sales growing in China?#
Compact digital cameras are the one retro device with a strong sales story in China, with online sales across three of China's largest marketplaces going from CN¥ 2.69 billion to CN¥ 5.60 billion and then to CN¥ 8.78 billion in the years to August 2024, 2025 and 2026, according to Moojing Market Intelligence, but the growth in the latest year came mostly from price.
Exhibit 10. Source: Moojing Market Intelligence, observed marketplace data across three online marketplaces, twelve months to August. Average price is sales divided by units. Not the total market.
On the annual totals, units grew only +8% while the average price rose from CN¥ 1,124 to CN¥ 1,626, a pattern that holds on the two marketplaces that carry most of the sales, and like for like units grew +10%. The fashion for cheap retro-styled "CCD" cameras, which drove the posts and the units in 2024 and 2025, has given way to buyers paying for premium compacts, and posts mentioning CCD cameras fell 23% in the latest year. The manufacturers' figures point the same way, since the Japanese industry body CIPA counted compact-camera shipments worldwide almost 30% higher in 2025 and shipments of all cameras to China 16% higher, while its monthly figures for 2026 show compacts still up in the first half but slipping below the previous year in June and July.
What happened to instant cameras?#
Instant cameras had their surge a year earlier, when online sales grew +77% to CN¥ 2.64 billion in the year to August 2025, in step with a shortage of instant film in May 2025, and sales have held at that level since without growing, according to Moojing Market Intelligence, so the instant camera, whose surge came a year earlier, has settled.
Units held at about 4.6 million in the latest year and the average price at about CN¥ 573, against CN¥ 1,626 for a compact. The report treats the instant camera as a warning for any craft that rises fast, since a surge can settle just as quickly, and we will watch whether fuse beads settle at their 2026 level in the same way.
Are other retro devices growing in China?#
Most of the analog bag's other hardware is going the other way in China, with MP3 and portable players falling 31% in the year to August 2025 and 15% like for like in the latest year, and board games, which grew +33% in the year to August 2025, falling 17% like for like, according to Moojing Market Intelligence.
Conversation about board games nearly tripled on one of the social platforms we measure, some of it from parents using board games to keep children off phones, and the industry's first official report, published in July 2026 by a committee of the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association, put China's board-game market at CN¥ 7.8 billion in 2025, more than half of it electronic versions. Feature phones, the "dumbphones" that Western coverage of digital detox treats as the furthest step a person can take, are harder to read, because most such phones in China are sold as phones for the elderly or for students and seldom under that name, and because one marketplace changed its feature-phone category in a way we could not reconcile, so the sales data support no verdict either way. National figures from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology suggest the basic phone has survived by moving to other channels, since handsets that are not smartphones rose from about 13 million in 2023 to about 22 million in 2025.
Is the United States moving in the same direction?#
On the few products where both countries can be measured, the United States is mostly moving in the same direction as China, and the closest like-for-like measure is compact cameras, since CIPA's member shipments rose +34% in units to the Americas in the year to August 2026 while shipments to China held level, at +1%, which fits the marketplaces we measure, where units grew only +10% and the value came from price.
| Product | China (online sales) | United States (source, measure, period) | How comparable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compact cameras | +58% in sales, +10% in units | +34%: CIPA, shipments to the Americas, units, September 2025 to August 2026 | Same window; shipments, not sales |
| Printed books | +5% in sales, slightly fewer units | −0.3%: Circana BookScan, print units, first half of 2026; +5.1%: US Census, bookstore sales, August 2025 to July 2026 | Direction only |
| Yarn | +65% in sales, +46% in units | +40%: Michaels, yarn accessory sales, year to early 2026 | Direction only; one retailer, in a year of chain closures |
| Craft and hobby products | +116% in sales, together | +20%: Circana, arts-and-crafts toy sales, first half of 2026 (+5% in 2025) | Direction only; a broad toy category |
| Jigsaw puzzles | +40% in sales, two marketplaces | +11%: Ravensburger, sales in the US and Canada, 2025, all products | Weak; one company |
Exhibit 11. Source: Moojing Market Intelligence, observed marketplace data across three online marketplaces, September 2025 to August 2026 against the year before, like for like (China); CIPA, Circana via Publishers Weekly and Circana, US Census Bureau, Michaels and Ravensburger (United States). Growth rates only: the measures differ, so no level is compared. China figures are not the total market.
No public American source measures what we measure, which is observed online sales product by product, so the comparison is made on the direction of travel, and each row says how far apart the two measures are. The two countries also differ in the kind of evidence there is, since the American case for a craft and hobby boom rests largely on searches and surveys, such as Michaels' search figures, while China's rests on what people bought, and although Pew found in 2026 that 53% of American adults think they spend too much time on their phones, that figure says nothing about what they do instead.
What does this mean for device brands?#
For camera and device brands, we believe the lesson is that China's retro fashion has moved from cheap novelty to the trade-up, since compact cameras added more money in the latest year than the five craft and hobby products together, by selling at higher prices on a few more units, so a device brand should sell the step up to a better camera instead of competing on price.
The report's fifth chapter sets out that recommendation and three others, which our article on four moves for brands summarises, while the full report has the method, the fuller American comparison and every exhibit. Our earlier article on China's OWS earphone and action camera growth covers two other device categories, and our China 3C and consumer electronics market intelligence page sets out what else we cover.
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