Canon Rumors

*UPDATED* No New Canon Stock for Wolf/Ritz Camera

Correction
Canon not selling to Ritz isn’t part of the bankruptcy proceedings. The issue is Ritz got to write-off a ton of debt to Canon.

Canon & Ritz couldn’t work out a new deal before the Christmas season.

Thanks for the clarification Eric

Not until 2010 at the earliest
Canon will not be selling them any new stock for the Christmas season to Ritz Camera. Canon will sell to the retail chain during Q1 2010 at the earliest.

Ritz will be sending existing Canon stock to the “Ultra Store” locations. Apparently they’re for the higher end gear.

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Canon to revive shelved Nagasaki camera plant plan

TOKYO, June 5 (Reuters) – Japan’s Canon Inc said on Friday it has decided to revive a shelved plan to build a $180 million digital camera factory in Nagasaki, southern Japan, on solid demand for digital single-lens reflex cameras.

Details on the timing of the plant’s start-up and any changes in the investment will be announced later in the day, a Canon spokesman said.

The plant, to make both digital compacts and digital single-lens reflex cameras, was originally to have an annual production capacity of 4 million cameras.

(Reporting by Mayumi Negishi)

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Canon Q1 profit falls 88%, raises outlook

TOKYO - Japan’s Canon Inc reported an 88 per cent fall in quarterly profit, hit by slumping demand for copiers and printers, but it raised its annual outlook on cost cuts and a weakening yen.

Demand for office machines and their supplies such as toner cartridges remained weak as the global financial crisis made the replacement cycle of copiers and printers longer and prompted corporate clients not to use them as heavily as before.

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Nikon Profit Down 64%, Sees Loss Ahead

Sign of the times
Will we see this same sort of report coming from Canon?

TOKYO, May 13 (Reuters) - Japanese precision equipment and camera maker Nikon Corp (7731.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Wednesday annual operating profit fell 64 percent, hurt by weak sales of chip-making machines, and it forecast a tumble into the red this year.

Operating income was 48.2 billion yen ($495 million) in the year ended March 31, beating an average market estimate of 42 billion yen from 17 brokerages surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

For the current financial year, Nikon, which launched a new entry-level digital single-lens reflex camera this month, forecast a loss of 12 billion yen, smaller than an average estimate from analysts of a 17 billion yen loss.

The world’s No.2 maker of chip steppers after Netherlands-based ASML (ASML.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) has been hurt by spending cuts by chipmakers amid a prolonged downturn and is looking increasingly to its cameras to cover the shortfall.

Steppers are multi-million dollar machines used to scan circuitry onto silicon wafers to make semiconductors. Canon Inc (7751.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) also competes in the market.

Shares of Nikon shed 58 percent in the year ended in March, while Canon lost close to 39 percent and Olympus Corp (7733.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) lost 48 percent. (Reporting by Mayumi Negishi; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

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Canon Delays Plant a Second Time

TOKYO: Japan’s Canon Inc. said Thursday that it was delaying the construction of a new manufacturing plant for a second time because of the global economic downturn.

Canon, which produces cameras and office equipment, had originally planned to start building the factory in late 2008 in southern Oita Prefecture.

It first delayed the start in November because of the worsening recession, and gave no new target date for the start of construction.

“The significant decline in demand has continued for longer than expected with no clear indication of when a recovery might be expected,” a company statement said.

Canon in December had shelved plans to build another domestic plant for digital cameras in southern Nagasaki prefecture.

The company, once hailed as a success story in Japan’s recovery from the 1990s recession, is one of many Japanese manufacturers cutting output and jobs to cope with the global economic downturn.

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The Real Chuck Westfall Speaks – CNET

Interview with Chuck Westfall

Real Chuck Westfall

CNET sat down with Chuck Westfall to discuss the future at Canon. Nothing overly exciting, but worth a read if you haven’t’ already.

My favourite question and response.

Nikon has been making market share gains in the last year. How does that change things for Canon in terms of pricing, marketing strategy, or product development?

Westfall: I’ll say this: It’s been very good for Canon as well as the rest of the industry and customers especially to have a very vigorous competition between the two companies. It works out to better products and very competitive pricing. We’re in this business to stay. We don’t back down from challenges. Our situation is pretty good. We are very well positioned in terms of our investment in R&D to be able to continue developing new products and technology to keep us at our No. 1 level. Based on the market research we’ve seen, although it is true that Nikon made some gains on us last year, we still ended up in the No. 1 position in units and dollars for both the SLR and compact camera categories.

Read More: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-10213645-39.html

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Consolidation of Camera Companies?

From an anonymous source
This could be nothing more than some random person’s pipe dream. It was an interesting concept anyway.

Panasonic
- Acquisition of Leica Camera AG. LeicaRumors also posted about this.
*edit* Leica Geosystems AG and Leica Microsystems AG are separate entities.

- Acquisition of Olympus Corporation.

The acquisition of Olympus makes a lot more sense to me than Leica. However, after what Panasonic paid for Sanyo, anything is possible.

Samsung
- Currently investigating the possibility of acquiring Hoya Corporation, owners of Pentax.

Samsung keeps threatening to really care about digital photography. I fully expected them to be very aggressive after teaming up with Pentax. It never really happened. They continue to make uninspiring P&S cameras and a dslr that no one has bought (some say makes better images than the K20D). However, Samsung Techwin is the 3rd largest manufacturer of digital cameras. They have the size to take on Sony for 3rd in the market.

If this were true, it would have been easier to buy Pentax before Hoya, unless Hoya has something coveted by Samsung as well.

None of this may be remotely true, but it was an interesting read anyway and something to think about. There are too many manufacturers of DSLR’s currently, I think something has to give.

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Digital Camera Sales Outlook – Not all That Bad

The Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA), which represents the various Japanese camera manufacturers, has released their outlook for digital camera sales, 2009-2011:

• Units shipped in 2008 rose 19.3%, to 119,757,000. Digital SLRs were a big part of that, with a year-on-year increase of 29.7%
• Overall camera shipments are expected to drop in 2009 by 0.7%; fixed lens camera shipments are forecast to drop by 1.3%, but D-SLR sales will help mitigate that, increasing by 6.8%
• Shipments are expected to increase in 2010 and 2011: fixed lens camera should rise 2.4% year-over-year, with D-SLRs doing even better (8.2% in 2010, 6.6% in 2011)

2009-2011 Outlook on the Shipment Forecast by Product-Type Concerning Cameras and Related Goods

The Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA, President: Tsuneji Uchida) has announced the outlook on the shipment forecasts by product-type concerning cameras and related goods for the term from 2009 to 2011.

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