Through The Looking Glass

[Mike Farley]

For some time now, the camera manufacturing industry has had an Alice In Wonderland feel to it. After the heady days when digital first became mainstream, sales have been falling over the past few years. Japanese corporations have always seemed to defy conventional business logic, so we have had several companies seemingly being successful in a contracting market. Olympus even survived a major accounting scandal, although cameras are only a small part of its operation. Samsung was a surprise late entry and despite the NX1 being well received, the company clearly realised that it could not make money from cameras and withdrew from the market.

Reality might be about to intrude and prick the bubble. While most of the Japanese manufacturers have other interests outside of camera production, the same does apply to Nikon to such an extent. It is trying to diversify, but it remains more reliant on cameras than its competitors. Nikon has not helped its case by introducing a number of high end models which had manufacturing faults. That was a double whammy which dented consumer confidence and increased costs due to the resulting repair bills. Thom Hogan has been critical of the company's strategy and marketing for years. He has pointed out a lack of innovation and updates which were too similar to their predecessors. Nikon was essentially competing against itself. Why buy the latest 3xxx or 5xxx when previous iterations do much the same job and are still available at a lower price? Why no D400 when customers were crying out for it?

Nikon has just announced large losses, the cancellation of the DL range and a restructuring which will see 1,000 employees leave. Nikon will probably survive, but for the company there must be some uncomfortable similarities comparable to when Kodak lost its markets. Kodak does still exist, but is a shadow of its former glories. This story is not yet over.

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.co ... nikon.html

[Mike Farley]

Thom Hogan has written about Nikon's prospects for survival. He is not expecting the company to be forced into declaring bankruptcy, but he does anticipate it will end up being smaller with fewer products which will be mainly high end.

http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/abo ... cials.html

[davidc]

It will be interesting to watch Nikon develop "high end" products. Quite a dramatic new strategy for them