Market Overview

The domestic POS terminal market showed a recovery as distribution and retail companies resumed investment in systems, which had been held off during the covid crisis. As a result, the shipment volume of the POS terminal market attained 96,773 units in FY022, 106.4% of the previous year.  However, the shipment by value fell below the previous year to 37,639 million yen (94.0% on the same basis).
The recovery trend was even more pronounced in FY2023, with shipment volume reaching 107,837 units (111.4%). Moreover, affected by the recent inflation, as well as by the rise in the unit price of POS system due to the spread of self-checkout POS terminals, the shipment value grew to 45,221 million yen (120.1%).

Noteworthy Topics

A Rise of Self-Checkout Backed by Serious Labor Shortage

A serious labor shortage in the retail distribution industry is urging the stores to find ways to cut down on manual operations, especially those regarding checkout and product merchandising. Under the circumstances, demand for semi-self-checkout may be replaced by the demand for full self-checkout, which eliminates the need for manual operation. In addition, owing to a patent right, a limited number of IT vendors can provide a semi-self-checkout system. Consequently, vendors will be competing against each other in the development of a full self-checkout system, thus making it a primary option for user companies. 

In addition to the traditional stationary self-checkout system, two new POS checkout systems are emerging: smart carts and mobile POS using smartphones. A smart cart is mainly a self-checkout system with a tablet computer mounted on the cart. Mobile POS is a self-checkout system that allows customers to read tags with their smartphone or with a store-owned smartphone. Going forward, the demand for these types of checkout systems is expected to rise significantly as it enables the reduction of checkers to the minimum.

Future Outlook

Since the market cannot expect considerable growth except when major retail chains upgrade their checkout systems, the demand for domestic POS terminals is projected to remain flat or shrink gradually.
The market size of POS terminal is expected to decline in FY2024 to 107,410 units (99.6% of the previous fiscal year) by shipment volume. Nevertheless, owing to the replacement of self-service checkout machines, it is forecasted to grow to 47,395 million yen (104.8% of the previous fiscal year) by shipment value. While the market size by volume is predicted to stay at 112,781 units (105%) for FY2025, it will drop to 42,857 million yen (90.4%) by value due to a decline in the unit price of self-service cash registers stemming from intensifying competition.
Substantial market growth is anticipated in FY2026 and FY2027. Given that the previous POS system upgrades at the three major chains occurred nearly at the same time, the next round of replacements is expected to follow a similar timeline.
By reason of the above, the shipment volume is expected to expand to 135,337 units in FY2026 (120.0% of the previous fiscal year) and 175,938 units by FY2027 (130.0%). The shipment value is forecasted to reach 51,428 million for FY2026 (120.0%) and 70,375 million for FY2027 (136.8%).

Research Outline