Sony released the new financial report. Details can be found here: sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/library/er.html
Like all other companies Sony is selling less camera in terms of units (entry-level compact camera market is shrinking). But unlike Canon (report on MR)…Sony is making money out of the Imaging Business! This because it’s selling more and more high-value cameras and lenses. This lead to a 88 billion yen income this year.
Sony also increased the income forecast for the next quarter. All looks very good so far!
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Canon’s PROFIT shrunk by 21% to 71.8 bln yen. That is $665 million profit. Profit means making money, right?
Absolutely and another strange ‘criticism’ of Canon when their approach does seem to make more sense.
I keep saying that it must be almost impossible to succeed within technology these days as the money you spend on R&D can never be recouped, because no sooner do you start to sell your fabulous new product than the company next to you start selling something shinier and newer!
They, in turn, won’t see a profit because the next company in line do the same thing. So all these once brilliant items are left on shelves.
It seems like Canon appreciate this and have maintained a slow, evolutionary outlook to product releases, yet they are panned for being left behind by Sony. Of course, such a policy is not without risk as they may find the bottom drops completely out of their market.
I’m delighted with the progess Sony have made, but I worry that it is built on sand. I’d much prefer to see Sony, Canon, Nikon, and everyone else, being very strong, but I’m certain that is an impossible hope.
what a full load of ****. From your point of view competition seems to be a bad thing. So long as all the major players are still making money this is meant to be. Slower companies will be left behind and their last ‘evolutionary’ updates were not so advanced.
If you look at the massive successes in tech over the last 15 years, it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking big or small, hardware or software- the companies that make money consistently sink lots of money into R&D and they innovate better and faster than average. From successes like Samsung, Apple, Netflix and Google to smaller ones like RED cameras, Tesla, and Uber, all of these companies essentially out-innovated their peers, consistently. A successful strategy in technology (of any kind) has never been to save money by not spending on R&D because someone else will negate your progress anyway. That’s a self defeating mindset.
Canon is rumored to be selling their sensor fab division. If true it will only be because they didn’t innovate, not because they spent too much money on R&D and too little on marketing. The digital camera industry isn’t really 15 years old and Canon in a way still seems stuck in the glory days of film, having never taken digital innovation serious enough. It’s too early to say and I would rather Canon be around, competing with the best. However, as a simple example, there is no reason a 5D mkIV DSLR (mirror and all) shouldn’t have been released a year ago- with a sensor better than what’s in the 5DS. There’s also no reason why their C300 mkII was over a year late to market compared to Sony’s FS7, and at twice the price. You can get a new F55 kit with the 4K upgrade and an a7s II thrown in for $16K, the price of the C300 mkII. Canon should have been dominant or at least stayed highly competitive with the C cinema line and they seem to have dropped the ball in the most incredible way.
I have nothing against Canon, I used to own a lot of their photo and video cameras. I just simply can’t understand what’s going on… except for their failure to innovate.
what’s happening is a combination of different factors: a change in consumer habits, the introduction of unpredictable disruptive technology (cameras in mobile phones), camera companies waking up from a 10-year long dream where their customers were simply upgrading their cameras every year or less. So far we’ve seen camera companies trying to keep customers attention and demand high by introducing a huge amount of different cameras with minimal differences, especially in the low-budget dslr market, and desperately trying to keep the compact p&s market alive. We’re seeing the digital camera bubble slowly deflating, and once we see the decline slowing down and numbers fluctuating between +/- 2% year by year, then we’ll know the market has stabilized. We’re probably moving towards a future where camera companies will introduce less camera models per year, and will slim down their offer. That’s what the numbers are saying: people are buying less cameras than before, and while the top-end cameras will always find demand in the professional segment of the market, the lower-end cameras demand will be drastically reduced. I don’t think Sony or Canon will have ANY problem with that, they’re both huge companies and have their hands in many different markets. Nikon and Fuji, on the other hand, may have to struggle more to remain competitive.
I think you have this the wrong way around: it is the companies who have initially made money are ten spending it in R&D, but that later investment is not necessarily worthwhile.
Also, some of your examples of this are poor. Apple are certainly an exception, but Tesla have never made a profit, I doubt Red ever have either, and others like Uber and Netflix are a different proposition entirely.
As I say, in recent years the endless treadmill of ‘progress’ is giving real headaches to technology companies. Even when a new idea that becomes extremely popular raises its head, it’s difficult making money…
Time has changed. In fact in the old days not everyone has a camera, a laptop, and a smartphone. There was a large market. But now… most people have these things. The economics is not as good as it used to be. People are more cautious with their money. Products today are good enough for majority of consumers and they don’t buy new ones for many years. As a result, IBM sold off its personal computer business many years ago. TI stopped heavily engaging in smartphone hardware development. Qualcomm laid off the entire QRD (quick reference design) department in China. Google stopped developing glass and Chrome OS… All these show that fancy new technology doesn’t equal to profit.
On the other hand, companies like Facebook is growing very fast. I think for the next decades, successful companies are those who focus on providing life-changing experiences/services rather than some fancy new tech toys like companies did 30 years ago. Considering this, I won’t be surprised wearable cameras could easily outsell dslrs and etc in the future.
Apple doesn’t win the market with specs, does it?
I see Sony’s digital cameras sales also shrunk by 28% from FY2014.
Other companies follow that good old strategy:
“With each unit our loss is $1. But selling it in masses will fix it.”
3Q 2015 Figures for Canon’s Imaging Business Unit
Sales for the business unit decreased by 4.2% to ¥302.5 billion, while operating profit totaled ¥41.7 billion, a decline of 3.8%.
Profitability is a good thing across the board, we should be celebrating every positive financial report in a market that’s contracting at a rapid pace. Canon is still making a profit as well, that sentence is incorrect.
Always good when consumer product manufacturers are profitable, because it means more choice and more competition, which benefits consumers.
But these figures still incorporate Sony’s soon-to-be-separated commercial sensor business? Once that business unit spins off from the consumer camera sales, how will these numbers look?
The concern is the sales of digital cameras appears to be down.
Do we have any sales info about how a7rii & a7sii are selling on a unit basis? I’m sure there was an initial rush to buy, but did that rush meet expectations and has there been a sustained level of interest?
as everyone can clearly see sonys camera biz is in bad shape.
the numbers declining year after year.
if you look at teh report you see the profit is not from making cameras.
sensor production is profitable and other parts of sonys businesses.
cost cutting helped… but you can´t do that forever.