Canon Profit set to Double

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Preliminary information about Canon's upcoming financial announcement indicate that profits will double for the first quarter of this year.

As I've noted before, Canon has invested heavily in Surveillance and Medical imaging, and its paying off. Camera sales in Asia are also strong. The surveillance and medical imaging fields are growth industries with much larger profits than the camera business. Canon's Image helps them to make sales in those areas, and they have bought into the best companies in the business.

Even though the big profit is not from camera sales, canon is not abandoning cameras, they remain a imaging company. Having the financial resources to invest in imaging R&D will benefit new cameras in the future.


"TOKYO -- Canon probably saw its group operating profit roughly double on the year in the January-March quarter to about 80 billion yen ($733 million), thanks to successful acquisitions and strong overseas sales of cameras and printers."Sales apparently grew 20% to just over 950 billion yen. Official quarterly results are due out Wednesday.
http://asia.nikkei.com/Markets/Tokyo-Market/Canon-s-profit-likely-doubled-on-Toshiba-unit-purchase

 

[mitchel2002]

the question now stands will canon turn there R&D to cameras or the surveillance field

 

[Antono Refa]

the question now stands will canon turn there R&D to cameras or the surveillance field

This will probably be decided based on expected ROI.

The linked announcement says "expensive digital SLR cameras are growing popular in China". I take it to mean Canon expects to have a positive ROI there, and, hence, will invest some money in R&D for this segment.

 

[brad-man]

So come on Canon. Throw a few of those R&D dollars to the EF-M Lens guys and let them come up with 2 or 3 quick primes. You know you should do it, and we know you can do it, so just do it!

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

the question now stands will canon turn there R&D to cameras or the surveillance field

R&D for sensors potentially benefits all sensors, new design techniques, new manufacturing processes, better lenses, these things can apply across the board.

Even R&D in medical imaging can benefit, a lot of that is in the electronics and software for ultrasound imaging. Canon has been in both of these fields for a long time. If you look at patents published weekly, most are for printers with cameras, and medical / surveillance being about equal.