Kodak PixPro Outsold Canon in Japan. Nobody Saw It Coming.

Every major manufacturer spent a decade retreating upmarket and telling themselves cheap cameras were dead. Kodak licensed its name to JK Imaging, put a $99 compact in the market, and in 2024 outsold Canon in Japan. That's not a fluke. That's a vacuum being filled. The real lesson here isn't nostalgia or retro aesthetics — it's that the entry point to 'real cameras' crept past $500 and a huge chunk of the market simply walked away. Those people didn't stop wanting cameras. They stopped being offered cameras they'd actually buy. If you shoot schools, community events, or entry-level portrait work, this is worth watching — because a new generation of photographers is building their first habits on PixPro sensors, not iPhones, and they'll be buying their second camera from whoever earns the relationship.