The header of the official Olympus restructuring goal document.
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To save costs and avoid redundancy Olympus is considering to merge the medical and imaging division by April 2015. The official document describing Olympus intentions can be seen here: Olympus Japan (translated via google).
What this means exactly for the camera division isn’t clear but to me it sounds likely that Olympus will “dismiss” some employees. Hope I am wrong with that assumption.
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Understandable. One can sell high-end cameras with better profit margins but the market for them is smaller overall and can’t sustain an overblown company. Such merger would not only save costs but help “mask” losses on paper. My guess is that more manufacturers will make similar decisions in attempt to streamline the companies. A big question mark for me is Nikon – they have all the eggs in one basket, so to speak, unlike Sony/Pana/Oly/Canon.
Nikon make steppers used in photolithography for semiconductor fabrication, that’s one big egg and it is most definitely in a different basket.
Not a big egg at all: steppers are 25% of Nikon sales, while 75% of their sales are cameras. Canon is the next highest in percentage of camera sales: currently 21% of their entire business. Nikon is highly vulnerable to the declining camera market, as I started pointing out several years ago.
Really? All other camera producers have less than 21% camera sales business? Pana, I can imagine, oly even, didn’t know, pentax not a complete surprise, hmm… makes me wonder, is nikon the one that takes cameras most seriously…? Then what are they waiting for?
Yes, really. Fujifilm, Panasonic, and Ricoh (Pentax) cameras are all low single digits as a portion of their business. Probably Sony, too, though I need to look at their current statistics again to verify. Olympus is probably the third company in terms of size of camera group to overall company in Japan. Well, okay, Sigma, but they’re private and very small in terms of cameras.
Nikon’s camera line is profitable, as is Canon’s.
Neither Sony, Panasonic, Fuji, nor Olympus are profitable in their camera lines. Big companies will cut money losing lines altogether. Shareholders have this thing where they are allergic to losing money.
The losses will only continue, because the manufacturers have convinced themselves that high prices for lenses and bodies means high margin, and the same shrinking group of people will buy every new model year after year. The companies will pursue this fiction until they are bankrupt.
Their bodies cost way too much, as do their lenses. Consumers are turning away in droves.
The good sign: the current round of discounts and incentives seem to be accelerating. As the price wars heat up, hopefully the vendors can stay viable longer, as their mass produced consumer toys become more affordable.
If anything new was coming, wouldn’t we have heard rumors by now? I am a little concerned because very little innovation happens during a corporate restructuring, because no one wants to lose their jobs. Based on this new info, we can safely say that there will be no new interesting features for the new Pen m43 cameras. I’m afraid it just isn’t possible with a corporate bean counter looking over your shoulder.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say they will stop making cameras, but we won’t see anything interesting for at least 2 years until the dust settles and R&D can have a proper go at things.
New pens 20mpix non phase detect sony table scraps. Limited peaking, no online apps, crap wifi…. blah blah blah If anyone else wants to know the specs of the new pen, just look for Sony’s specs for NEX from last year.
Innovation is something which only happens a few times, and we already had some of it, so I think you should not think so pessimistic about this aspect.
Innovation is not at all the same thing as product proliferation.
Rolling out yet another model whose results are virtually indistinguishable from that of the prior model or the model before that has been a hallmark of most mirrorless vendors the last 2 or 3 years. Minor feature differences are not ‘innovation,’ despite the protestations of interweb blogs.
Well, they’ve already been able to merge awesomeness with compact so why not. As far as new features, I know I’m in the minority here, but I feel like my EP5 is nearly perfect. I enjoy the VF-4, ergonomics and overall layout. LCD on the back could be a OLED but we’re splitting hairs. I’m so happy with the quality of my olympus cameras and lenses I really don’t care if nothing comes out in the next year or so. Of course, any caring would be regulated to seeing Olympus survive this current market.
This confirms my suspicions. Three years from now, the only remaining camera manufacturers will be Canon, Nikon, Sony, Samsung and the niche players Sigma, Leica, Phase One and Hasselblad.
Olympus, Panasonic, Fujifilm, Ricoh and Casio will focus on the more profitable parts of their respective businesses, retreating from the camera market never to return.
You’re making some very specific claims there. Care to explain how the Olympus reorganisation confirms those claims?
I think Fuji will still be around and possibly Panasonic but with the big lawsuit against Olympus not sure they can survive I’m surprised that Casio and Ricoh are still around
I think some of the camera makers will release fewer cameras soon. Sony has come out with the Rx100 RX100m2 and now soon the RX200 in a very short time period This must be costly.
Fuji also with their X100 to X100s and XE1 to XE2 and XM1 and XA1 and now XT1 all in a shot window – it might be a less of an issue for Canon I rather see the company’s around the so many models I just hope Panasonic and Olympus stay in the m43 business. As well as Fuji and Sony I have not been impressed with Samsung but they have lots of money regardless if camera division does not make any profit
They already release fewer cameras, but they have started the process at the bottom. Practically all of the manufacturers, even Canon, have fewer low-end P&S compacts in their line-ups now than just a couple of years ago, instead focusing on enthusiast compacts, super zooms and travel zooms. Nikon seems to be the only company that still believes in the low-end market segment, since they keep iterating their entire Coolpix line-up.
True. I was referring more to the 70’s 80’s 90’s when there where lot fewer releases so what ever it takes for them to stay afloat and make some small profit without getting stagnant I would be happy about competition is needed and if it is only Canon left then that would not be good :). They are so huge like an oil tanker it takes them awhile to take turns and in a way I am glad as that has allowed Panasonic and Fuji and Olympus and Sony to bring out the Mirrorless system which I love for the size and weight if it was just Canon then it would just be Rebels and their small point and shoot.