Globally, Honda is the largest motorcycle manufacturer, a position it reports in its own annual production figures. In Malaysia, its share of new motorcycle registrations is falling fast.
We counted every new motorcycle registered in Malaysia in the first eight months of the year, from the Road Transport Department (JPJ) files published on data.gov.my, and compared 2018 with 2026 on the same January-to-August window. The market grew 43.5 per cent over those eight years, from 372,759 registrations to 534,866, the most in any year in our data. Honda did not grow with it. Its registrations fell, from 102,042 to 89,562, and its share of the market nearly halved, from 27.4 per cent to 16.7 per cent.
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The finding, in one line
Honda's share of Malaysia's newly registered motorcycles peaked, within our 2018-to-2026 window, at 35.3 per cent in 2021, and has fallen in every year since, to 16.7 per cent in 2026. Over the same five years Yamaha's share rose, from 42.1 per cent in 2021 to 48.1 per cent in 2026, and it held the top spot in every year. Two of the biggest names in motorcycling, in one market, on diverging paths.
Honda's share has fallen for five straight years
Honda's decline is steady, not a one-year blip. On the matched 2018-to-2026 comparison its registrations fell from 102,042 to 89,562. By registration count its high within our window was 2022, at 167,921 for the January-to-August window, and it has fallen in each of the four years since, to 89,562 in 2026, nearly half its 2022 level and the lowest in our nine-year window. In 2026 its registrations were about 19 per cent below a year earlier, while the total number of motorcycles registered rose about 13 per cent.
Over the same 2018-to-2026 window Yamaha moved the other way, from 174,505 registrations to 257,465, a rise of about 48 per cent, and it held the number one position in every year. Its share reached a high of 54.4 per cent in 2025 before easing to 48.1 per cent in 2026, so its most recent year was marginally below its own peak even as it stayed far ahead of Honda. Honda has trailed Yamaha in every year of our window; what has changed is the size of the gap.
Here is the full picture, year by year, for the January-to-August window.
| Year | Total registered | Honda | Honda share | Yamaha | Yamaha share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 372,759 | 102,042 | 27.4% | 174,505 | 46.8% |
| 2019 | 401,475 | 117,893 | 29.4% | 204,882 | 51.0% |
| 2020 | 345,038 | 115,545 | 33.5% | 161,090 | 46.7% |
| 2021 | 369,149 | 130,137 | 35.3% | 155,292 | 42.1% |
| 2022 | 485,948 | 167,921 | 34.6% | 193,388 | 39.8% |
| 2023 | 447,423 | 134,097 | 30.0% | 222,882 | 49.8% |
| 2024 | 438,168 | 116,635 | 26.6% | 228,742 | 52.2% |
| 2025 | 475,426 | 110,886 | 23.3% | 258,834 | 54.4% |
| 2026 | 534,866 | 89,562 | 16.7% | 257,465 | 48.1% |
The makers that rose while Honda's share fell
As Honda's share fell, a crowd of newer maker labels rose alongside Yamaha. We counted the maker field in the JPJ file exactly as recorded, and 48 maker labels that appear in the 2026 file do not appear anywhere in the 2018 file. Together they account for 104,783 registrations, 19.6 per cent of all 2026 registrations.
The biggest of them is Aveta, which goes from not appearing in the 2018 file at all to 38,628 registrations, the third most-registered maker in the country this year. QJMotor (22,920), Moda (11,100) and WMoto (9,822) follow.
One thing this is not: an electric-vehicle story. Of those 104,783 registrations under new maker labels, 96,350, about 92 per cent, are recorded as petrol. Aveta's are entirely petrol. The whole 2026 motorcycle register remains 97.7 per cent petrol. These newer labels are overwhelmingly petrol, not electric. The two-wheel shift to electric, which we covered separately, is a different and much smaller story.
Meanwhile an older name fell further than Honda. Sanyang, recorded in the file under the maker label "Sanyang Motors", was the third most-registered motorcycle brand in 2018 at 33,154. In 2026 it registered 6,909, a fall of 79 per cent, while the market around it grew.
What this does and does not show
These are registrations, not sales. A registration can lag a purchase or sit in a different month from it, so the figures track when motorcycles were entered into the national register, which is the closest public measure of what reached Malaysian roads. We count the JPJ maker field exactly as it is recorded. That field names makers, not models, so we make no claim about individual models. It is also not perfectly tidy: JPJ records some brands under a distributor's name rather than the brand's own, so a maker label appearing for the first time is not always a brand that is genuinely new, though Aveta, QJMotor and Moda do not appear anywhere in the 2018 file. The data records what was registered and under which maker label; it cannot tell us why a buyer chose one brand over another, what any motorcycle cost, or which names Malaysian riders know. We have left the registering state out entirely, because 84.6 per cent of 2026 rows are recorded as "Rakan Niaga", a registration channel rather than a place, which makes any geographic cut unreliable.
Anyone can reproduce this. Download the motorcycle registration files for each year from 2018 to 2026 from data.gov.my, keep the rows dated January to August in each, and count them by the maker field. The two endpoint files, 2018 and 2026, reproduce the headline comparison; the full set of nine reproduces the year-by-year table, Honda's 2021 share peak and its 2022 count peak, Yamaha's 2025 share peak, and the test for which maker labels are absent from the 2018 file.
Why we care about this
This is the record desk at work. We do not report the launch, we report the outcome, by reading Malaysia's own public records instead of anyone's press release. Over eight years, the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer has lost more than a third of its share of Malaysia's new motorcycles, while maker labels that were not in the register at all in 2018 now take almost one registration in five.
