Just how bad did the Thailand floods hurt camera production? Bad, real bad.
When you compare the third quarter (pre-flood) to fourth quarter (flood) you get these numbers:
| Pre-flood Qtr | Flood Qtr | Change | |
| Compacts | 29.7m | 23.6m | -21% |
| Mirrorless | 1.2m | 862k | -28% |
| DSLRs | 4.5m | 2.4m | -47% |
With compacts, most of the production is done in China and a number of other SE Asian countries. Moreover, compact sales have been falling slightly to start with, so the change can't necessarily be attributed all to the floods. Still, much of the change probably was parts supply affected by the flood.
Mirrorless and DSLRs are still growing categories, and here we see big drops, especially for DSLRs (Sony and Nikon both produce a majority of their DSLRs in Thailand where the floods closed plants).
True, quarter-to-quarter estimates aren't a perfect measuring tool. But we've not seen this large of change in the negative direction in any previous years when comparing the same quarters (typically the opposite, as the flood-impacted quarter has a lot of Christmas season re-stocking in it).