Sony to Acquire Toshiba’s Image Sensor Business

[SPKoko]

After:

Sony sensors are now their own business

now we learn that:

Sony to Acquire Toshiba’s Image Sensor Business for $165M, Report Says

How do you think that this will affect Canon and us as consumers? Should Canon give up and start buying sensors from the now almost-sensor-monopoly as it will be impossible to compete with them? Should Canon raise their bet and invest tons of $ in R&D to be the only real alternative/competition to Sony?

 

[Maximilian]

How do you think that this will affect Canon and us as consumers? Should Canon give up and start buying sensors from the now almost-sensor-monopoly as it will be impossible to compete with them? Should Canon raise their bet and invest tons of $ in R&D to be the only real alternative/competition to Sony?

1. "monopoly" and "market adjustment" are always bad for the customers as they will have to pay more.
2. Canons business goal is to be/stay on top in imaging systems/cameras.
So they will always chose the sensors that make their cameras most competitive (in their opinion, not in the opinion of internet fora ).
3. Canon is yet to define a new business goal to get into the sensor marekt and be competition to Sony. Quite unlikely.

==> "nothing ever happens" (acc. to Del Amitri) and we will pay more.

 

[Orangutan]

How do you think that this will affect Canon and us as consumers? Should Canon give up and start buying sensors from the now almost-sensor-monopoly as it will be impossible to compete with them? Should Canon raise their bet and invest tons of $ in R&D to be the only real alternative/competition to Sony?

1. "monopoly" and "market adjustment" are always bad for the customers as they will have to pay more.
2. Canons business goal is to be/stay on top in imaging systems/cameras.
So they will always chose the sensors that make their cameras most competitive (in their opinion, not in the opinion of internet fora ).
3. Canon is yet to define a new business goal to get into the sensor marekt and be competition to Sony. Quite unlikely.

+1

Should Canon give up and start buying sensors from the now almost-sensor-monopoly

Not until Nikon, Sony, et. al. can improve their rest of their systems to offer some business competition to Canon. This question is a continuation of an unwarranted assumption that Canon can't improve their sensors dramatically at low ISO. All we know is that they have not chosen to do so, but have conserved cash that would have been needed for major retooling. That will eventually be needed (assuming SoNykon can improve other aspects of their offerings) but Canon had the financial luxury of skipping a generation (or more) of retooling costs.

The question only becomes meaningful when Canon loses ongoing profitability relative to the others.

 

[plam_1980]

Should Canon give up and start buying sensors from the now almost-sensor-monopoly

Not until Nikon, Sony, et. al. can improve their rest of their systems to offer some business competition to Canon. This question is a continuation of an unwarranted assumption that Canon can't improve their sensors dramatically at low ISO. All we know is that they have not chosen to do so, but have conserved cash that would have been needed for major retooling. That will eventually be needed (assuming SoNykon can improve other aspects of their offerings) but Canon had the financial luxury of skipping a generation (or more) of retooling costs.

The question only becomes meaningful when Canon loses ongoing profitability relative to the others.

Don't be so certain - as this just came in:
http://www.canonrumors.com/canon-actively-testing-third-party-sensors-cr2/

Maybe not put them in pro bodies (but neither original poster nor you have clarified to talk specifically for pro bodies), but Mr. Maeda repeatedly said that they will use the best sensors, implying that they could be third-party as well. In fact they already use third-party sensors in G models

 

[martti]

Canon is testing everything in the market of course. How else would they know what they'd have to do to get to the same level and above?

With Sony it is just a question of time before they goof up this line of business like they did with videos and TVs and Walkmans already. They are very good with engineering but nuls with interfaces and usability. I know, I have a Bravia TV and the A6000 camera. My Z2 phone I gave away after the third time back from the repair shop.

 

[plam_1980]

Canon is testing everything in the market of course. How else would they know what they'd have to do to get to the same level and above?

With Sony it is just a question of time before they goof up this line of business like they did with videos and TVs and Walkmans already. They are very good with engineering but nuls with interfaces and usability. I know, I have a Bravia TV and the A6000 camera. My Z2 phone I gave away after the third time back from the repair shop.

If you read that article again (or at least once), you will get the impression that they test it to use it in their products, not just to improve their own sensors. Plus like I said, they already use Sony's 1" sensors in the G series, so maybe they are not that bad. And Mr. Maeda implied they can use 3-rd party sensors, if they are better.

I myself am not a proponent of "Canon's sensors are inferior and they should use Sony or will go bankrupt" theory at all. But obviously they are trying different possibilities - and not just to compare to their own fabrication, but to see if by using 3-rd party sensors in reality they can provide a better final product. Whether this happens or not remains to be seen.

 

[martti]

The conclusion that the Canon research and design people might draw could be for instance that the most rational way to beat the competition is to buy Sony sensors while our own developments catch up. The CEO's words can be interpreted any old way, he speaks like an oracle. What Canon has in the pipeline, we just do not know.

Which is why this site is called Canon Rumors, not Canon's business plans.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

After:

Sony sensors are now their own business

now we learn that:

Sony to Acquire Toshiba’s Image Sensor Business for $165M, Report Says

How do you think that this will affect Canon and us as consumers? Should Canon give up and start buying sensors from the now almost-sensor-monopoly as it will be impossible to compete with them? Should Canon raise their bet and invest tons of $ in R&D to be the only real alternative/competition to Sony?

You are thinking that Sony's sensor market is all about DSLR's?

Its about phones, 7 or more sensors in a car, sensors for appliances, homes, everything imaginable. That's why Sony split it off into a new business, they see the sensor business to be far larger than the relatively few DSLR's being sold.

Canon is not in the sensor business, except as making them for their DSLR's and a few High End P&S cameras. They have mostly sourced many tens or hundreds of millions of small P&S sensors from Sony since the beginning. Those LCD screens are from Sony as well. The camera business in Japan is very intermingled, with manufacturers selling parts to each other. P&S lenses are also a commodity, and often the same lens assembly is used in multiple makes of camera. Only the high end P&S have a Canon made lens. Nikon is said to farm out production of their P&S cameras. It is a complex tangled web.