Canon Says Q1 Profit Hit by Weak Printer, Camera Sales

[AvTvM]

I believe Canon is doing all it can to navigate in uncharted waters, better than many.

Canon Defense League: the waters are not uncharted. Evreybody can see miles ahead, that mirroslappers are fading and Canon has too weak a mirrorless offering on the market. It should definitely NOT have been Sony to come out with the first full-blown FF-sensored MILC system. It should have been Canon. That was so plain to see, you really wonder how they could miss that boat so badly. Why on earth did they leave Sony and Fuji so much manuevering room, when they could have shut them down from the start?

 

[bdunbar79]

I believe Canon is doing all it can to navigate in uncharted waters, better than many.

Canon Defense League: the waters are not uncharted. Evreybody can see miles ahead, that mirroslappers are fading and Canon has too weak a mirrorless offering on the market. It should definitely NOT have been Sony to come out with the first full-blown FF-sensored MILC system. It should have been Canon. That was so plain to see, you really wonder how they could miss that boat so badly. Why on earth did they leave Sony and Fuji so much manuevering room, when they could have shut them down from the start?

It really doesn't change the fact that MILC still hasn't caught on. After all these years, it's still not really growing and has a woefully small market share. Is there something going on somewhere else that we don't have access to that would make you think MILC is the way of the future? I don't really see any evidence to support that. Why do you think it is?

 

[unfocused]

I believe Canon is doing all it can to navigate in uncharted waters, better than many.

Canon Defense League: the waters are not uncharted. Evreybody can see miles ahead, that mirroslappers are fading and Canon has too weak a mirrorless offering on the market. It should definitely NOT have been Sony to come out with the first full-blown FF-sensored MILC system. It should have been Canon. That was so plain to see, you really wonder how they could miss that boat so badly. Why on earth did they leave Sony and Fuji so much manuevering room, when they could have shut them down from the start?

I really hope you just post these comments for entertainment value, because if you actually believed 1/10th of what you post it would represent a real disconnect from reality.

 

[mkabi]

Out of curiosity, what was last years profits?

Can anyone tell me the trend for the last 5 years?

 

[that1guyy]

How about weak products?

 

[neuroanatomist]

I believe Canon is doing all it can to navigate in uncharted waters, better than many.

Canon Defense League: the waters are not uncharted. Evreybody can see miles ahead, that mirroslappers are fading and Canon has too weak a mirrorless offering on the market. It should definitely NOT have been Sony to come out with the first full-blown FF-sensored MILC system. It should have been Canon. That was so plain to see, you really wonder how they could miss that boat so badly. Why on earth did they leave Sony and Fuji so much manuevering room, when they could have shut them down from the start?

I really hope you just post these comments for entertainment value, because if you actually believed 1/10th of what you post it would represent a real disconnect from reality.

That's what happens when your mirror slaps you in the head until your ears bleed.

 

[takesome1]

A rehash of Reuters, really? One should go to the source.

When Canon says this:

From this link:

http://www.canon.com/ir/

Within the Imaging System Business Unit, sales volume of interchangeable-lens digital cameras remained at around the same level as the previous year owing to healthy demand for the advanced-amateur-model EOS 80D, launched this year, and the EOS M3 and M10, which were released the previous year, in Japan and other Asian markets.

As for inkjet printers, sales promotions for new products contributed to growth in unit sales in developed markets, such as those in Europe, the U.S. and Japan, while models launched in the previous year equipped with large-capacity ink tanks enjoyed strong demand in Asia, a region in which market conditions have remained sluggish.

Consequently, unit sales for the segment remained at approximately the same level as for the corresponding period of the previous year.

So the loss had nothing to do with the volume of sales of DSLR's and Printers.

 

[udpumpkin]

Quarterly PROFIT of $361 million. Canon is doomed.

Canon has invested over $26.5 billion in the assets required to manufacture and distribute imaging products. In that context, the quarterly profit seems rather inadequate.

 

[Tugela]

Crippling their cameras, releasing 3-4 year old tech and not updating their best sellers... not a big surprise that their profit is falling... Maybe this will help canon wake up and realize they can't just float on past success forever.

Their competition actually did a bit worse.

Quarterly PROFIT of $361 million. Canon is doomed.

Why should people let facts influence their biased opinions?

Its far from doomed but investors clearly dont like to see a 39% drop in profits and it shows how far wrong you can be with forecasting revenues & EBITDA. Profit also generates the cash for R&D a key metric for technology companies like Canon.
The Toshiba medical business would not have generated significant bottom line cash yet and Axis AB is only into a year of 85% ownership these are long term strategic shifts to cushion the shock of traditional business demise or fluctuations.

Gross profit is used in part to fund R&D (which becomes an operating expense), net profit is what they report as "profit".

The danger going forward from reduced profits is that in order to increase net profit in following quarters, less gross profit will be invested in R&D, which in turn will mean fewer product updates in future years.

These things do have consequences, although they might not be immediately obvious to an outside observer.

What would be particularly troubling would be even small drops in revenue, since operating costs tend to be fixed and any reduced revenue stream would have a big impact on gross profits within a particular sector. When that happens senior management will be looking to be making internal cuts to reduce costs, and usually R&D are the hardest hit when that happens since they are not in the immediate revenue generation pipeline.

That is how every tech company works, and so will Canon. I imagine that it is likely trying times within the camera division at the moment.

 

[Pascal Parvex]

Why on earth did they leave Sony and Fuji so much manuevering room, when they could have shut them down from the start?

First, they don't want to kill their DSLR sales, in which they have put a lot of research. And second, a full frame MILC only has a smaller body, but as soon as you add something else than a pancake lens, the size is the same or even bigger than the equivalent DSLR setup, as I have seen in a recent article. The size advantage for full frame MILC is moot. It is just for people who don't want a mirror. And then the Sony and co. offerings have bad battery capacity performance.

 

[takesome1]

Are we missing the point of how this will impact you?

31% of the loss of profit came from an unfavorable exchange rate.
How can Canon correct this, is simple.
The cost of cameras and lenses will be going up.

 

[VanWeddings]

just came back from a month in japan. most of the tourists i saw, and that is 90% japanese, were wielding mirrorless cameras. sure, anecdotal, but i saw a lot of people and their cameras.

another observation, the older tourists tended to have just a compact, but the younger ones either had a phone or a pretty recent mirrorless.

i still see lots of DSLRs back home but increasingly more mirrorless. canon needs to have more serious offerings for mirrorless if they want to grow in the long term.

 

[George D.]

Weak printer and camera sales? Last year I contributed an MX925 multifunction and an IXY170 IS. My product registration page runs a page long. Canon should be giving us incentives to buy. One IXY free after another EF lens or something. For the printers, office email ends with green urge "save the environment, think before you print". So we should print less and less. Does that hurt sales? Diversify to drones or binoculars. It's the name of the game.

 

[scyrene]

Crippling their cameras, releasing 3-4 year old tech and not updating their best sellers... not a big surprise that their profit is falling... Maybe this will help canon wake up and realize they can't just float on past success forever.

Their competition actually did a bit worse.

Quarterly PROFIT of $361 million. Canon is doomed.

Why should people let facts influence their biased opinions?

It is laughably pathetic how all these people crawl out of the woodwork with the same yawn-inducing (and obviously incorrect) theory. 'If *only* they'd produce the precise camera *I* want, they'd be the most successful company in the world!'

 

[scyrene]

This is why in recent years, there's been a bit of a comeback of the laser printer. For people who just want documents, the laser is better. But more expensive, so it has to be folks who really can justify the printer costs. Not the same for inkjets. They are horrible value for document printing. And where they really shine, in photo-printing, they are a terrible value there too. Only with the highest end inkjets, and best paper in ideal circumstances can you get close to professional print. Note, close - not the same. You might get all the resolution and color, but not durability and other qualities.

But really, that isn't even the killer. It's the cost. By the time you get an inkjet printer, the cartridges and paper - what is your 8x10 print cost? What people don't factor in is all the calibration steps and other ink and paper waste that takes place. So your yield is never 100% of your materials. Not even close.

I agree laser printers are better for document printing, and high volume, lower quality stuff - and that has been the case for many a year. Home inkjet printing is expensive. But at the low end, it's probably a close run thing with print shops - depending on what you print. I run a Pixma Pro 9000 II (I think it's called), and it's very similar in cost to ordering prints - but when I have done that in the past, I was disappointed with the quality. Basically, I can calibrate colours, select the best media for my purposes (and by eye, to taste), etc. And as for durability and quality, well the best Canon paper is rated to 100 years (under ideal conditions), which has to be similar to getting it done centrally. I can't test this empirically, of course.

I think for most people, home photo printing is poor value, but it isn't always inferior. This is just my experience and observation, of course.

 

[AvTvM]

It is laughably pathetic how all these people crawl out of the woodwork with the same yawn-inducing (and obviously incorrect) theory. 'If *only* they'd produce the precise camera *I* want, they'd be the most successful company in the world!'

The very camera I want - basically a Sony A7 II by Canon - would sell by the millions. No doubt about that. Nothing laughable at all. Only Canon Defense league thinks, Canon knows everything. Canon f*cked up royally on mirrorless. They could have owned that market from the very start. But they were too stupid to do so adn allowed Sony and Fuji to establish themselves. Sony would have been finished in camera business with their SLT clunkers, had Canon pre-empted them with excellent MILCs.

 

[bdunbar79]

It is laughably pathetic how all these people crawl out of the woodwork with the same yawn-inducing (and obviously incorrect) theory. 'If *only* they'd produce the precise camera *I* want, they'd be the most successful company in the world!'

The very camera I want - basically a Sony A7 II by Canon - would sell by the millions. No doubt about that. Nothing laughable at all. Only Canon Defense league thinks, Canon knows everything. Canon f*cked up royally on mirrorless. They could have owned that market from the very start. But they were too stupid to do so adn allowed Sony and Fuji to establish themselves. Sony would have been finished in camera business with their SLT clunkers, had Canon pre-empted them with excellent MILCs.

I still don't understand. Why would Canon care about cameras that have an insignificant market share and aren't growing? Actually I feel bad for Sony for developing something that a woefully small part of the market cares about.

 

[neuroanatomist]

It is laughably pathetic how all these people crawl out of the woodwork with the same yawn-inducing (and obviously incorrect) theory. 'If *only* they'd produce the precise camera *I* want, they'd be the most successful company in the world!'

The very camera I want - basically a Sony A7 II by Canon - would sell by the millions. No doubt about that. Nothing laughable at all. Only Canon Defense league thinks, Canon knows everything. Canon f*cked up royally on mirrorless. They could have owned that market from the very start. But they were too stupid to do so adn allowed Sony and Fuji to establish themselves. Sony would have been finished in camera business with their SLT clunkers, had Canon pre-empted them with excellent MILCs.

I still don't understand. Why would Canon care about cameras that have an insignificant market share and aren't growing? Actually I feel bad for Sony for developing something that a woefully small part of the market cares about.

Canon has sold nearly 100 million EOS cameras. AvTvM has bought a few. Clearly, he knows more about the ILC market than Canon. What's so hard to understand about that? : : :

 

[AvTvM]

It is laughably pathetic how all these people crawl out of the woodwork with the same yawn-inducing (and obviously incorrect) theory. 'If *only* they'd produce the precise camera *I* want, they'd be the most successful company in the world!'

The very camera I want - basically a Sony A7 II by Canon - would sell by the millions. No doubt about that. Nothing laughable at all. Only Canon Defense league thinks, Canon knows everything. Canon f*cked up royally on mirrorless. They could have owned that market from the very start. But they were too stupid to do so adn allowed Sony and Fuji to establish themselves. Sony would have been finished in camera business with their SLT clunkers, had Canon pre-empted them with excellent MILCs.

I still don't understand. Why would Canon care about cameras that have an insignificant market share and aren't growing? Actually I feel bad for Sony for developing something that a woefully small part of the market cares about.

Canon has sold nearly 100 million EOS cameras. AvTvM has bought a few. Clearly, he knows more about the ILC market than Canon. What's so hard to understand about that? : : :

Canon's mistakes are rather evident. No matter how many cameras they (claim to) have sold. Kodak sold gazillion rolls of film ... and still went under. As with Canon, past success made them arrogant and disconnected from their client base and potential new customers.

 

[bdunbar79]

It is laughably pathetic how all these people crawl out of the woodwork with the same yawn-inducing (and obviously incorrect) theory. 'If *only* they'd produce the precise camera *I* want, they'd be the most successful company in the world!'

The very camera I want - basically a Sony A7 II by Canon - would sell by the millions. No doubt about that. Nothing laughable at all. Only Canon Defense league thinks, Canon knows everything. Canon f*cked up royally on mirrorless. They could have owned that market from the very start. But they were too stupid to do so adn allowed Sony and Fuji to establish themselves. Sony would have been finished in camera business with their SLT clunkers, had Canon pre-empted them with excellent MILCs.

I still don't understand. Why would Canon care about cameras that have an insignificant market share and aren't growing? Actually I feel bad for Sony for developing something that a woefully small part of the market cares about.

Canon has sold nearly 100 million EOS cameras. AvTvM has bought a few. Clearly, he knows more about the ILC market than Canon. What's so hard to understand about that? : : :

Canon's mistakes are rather evident. No matter how many cameras they (claim to) have sold. Kodak sold gazillion rolls of film ... and still went under. As with Canon, past success made them arrogant and disconnected from their client base and potential new customers.

I feel better now. I thought maybe you had a point for a minute, but nope. Just stupidity.