Yamaha Motorcycles Global Sales are negative. Turning to 2025, the first half was disappointing, breaking the recovery track and reporting sales declined 2.1%, at 2.3 million. Actually Yamaha is the third best selling OEM in the word.
McD tracks new vehicles registrations across the World (over 90 countries), reporting data on calendar year. When you wish to compare data reported by us to those declared by the manufacturers, consider they usually report their “sales” (vehicles invoiced), which are usually different from “registrations”, accordingly with their fiscal year split.
Yamaha Global Sales Trend
Following the sharp fall reported in 2020, Yamaha has recovered steady in the global sales ending the 2024 with 4.8 million sales.
While the global market was at the all-time record level, the Japanese company was still near 1.5 million sales below its best, reached in 2019, as effect of increased competition by Chinese and Indian manufacturers.
Yamaha actually ranks as third motorcycles manufacturer in the world, after Honda and Hero.
In a global scenario, where the traditional archrival Honda keeps growing, although the growth of all the 5 Indians big manufacturers and with several new Chinese OEMs invading the market, Yamaha is struggling to defend its rule and is any year more distance from the second seat on which it was for decades.
Turning to 2025, the first half was disappointing, breaking the recovery track and reporting sales declined 2.1%, at 2.3 million.
The decline is mainly due to the difficulties found in India, were sales declined 17.4% in a very competitive market, evolved even in the electric scooter segment and where Yamaha is not active in updating the offer proposal as most of competitors.
Sales are declining sharply in East Europe as well (-35.9%) while are fast growing in Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Mongolia).
In other regions sales are in line with the previous year score.
Yamaha Heritage and Innovation
The motorcycle division of Yamaha was founded in 1955, being incorporated on 1 July 1955 in Japan,[6] and was headed by Genichi Kawakami. Yamaha’s initial product was a 125cc (7.6 cu in) two-cycle, single cylinder motorcycle, the YA-1.
In 1968 Yamaha launched their first four-stroke motorcycle, the XS-1. The Yamaha XS-1 was a 650cc four-stroke twin, a larger and more powerful machine that equaled the displacement and performance of the popular British bikes of the era, such as the Triumph Bonneville and BSA Gold Star.
In the early 1970s, Yamaha added reed-valve induction to its previously piston-ported designs to produce the twin-cylinder RD and single-cylinder RS families, with variants in a number of capacities.
By 1980 the combination of consumer preference and environmental regulation made four strokes increasingly popular. Suzuki ended production of their GT two stroke series, including the flagship water-cooled two-stroke 750cc GT-750 in 1977.
In 1998 Yamaha marketed a 1000cc four cylinder road bike called the YZF ‘R1’, this model introduced a new style of gearbox design which shortened the overall length of the motor/gearbox case, to allow a more compact unit. This, in turn allowed the motor to be placed in the frame further forward, designed to improve handling in a short wheel-based frame.
In 1995, Yamaha announced the creation of Star Motorcycles, a new brand name for its cruiser series of motorcycles in the American market. In other markets, Star motorcycles are still sold under the Yamaha brand. This was an attempt to create a brand identity more closely aligned with the cruiser market segment, one of the largest and most lucrative in the USA.
In 2007, Yamaha established the Philippine operations and distributes Yamaha motorcycles under the corporate name of Yamaha Motor Philippines, Inc., one of more than 20 worldwide subsidiaries operating on all continents.
