Photokina...What the?

[Lance B]

Nikon is not huge. It is less than 1/4 the size of Canon and 1/10 the size of Sony and 1/3 the size of Fuji. Even Olympus is about the same size. The total sales have dropped from just over 1 trillion Yen in 2013/14 to 0.82 trillion yen in 2015/16. They have reasons for concern.

They are still a huge company (especially compared to many Australian companies) regardless of how they compare to Canon etc. Their camera sales are an order of magnitude more than Olympus, Fuji and Pentax etc. Sony, Fuji and Olympus are involved with other products, I am focusing on their camera divisions which is what this is all about. Lower total camera sales are affecting almost all camera manufacturers due to camera phones eating away at the lower end of the market, that is something no camera maker can do anything about unless they start making phones as well. Nikon camera division has no real reasons for concern about their future camera sales any more than Fuji, Olympus, Pentax, Sony and to a lesser degree Canon - but I think Canon still needs to take heart because if camera phones keep getting better then they too will feel the wrath of less sales at the lower end of the market. Canon sold about 9.5million total sales of compact cameras and IL cameras whereas Nikon sold a total of about 6.5million units. FF DSLR's are still doing very well for Nikon especially against Canon, they just need to address APS C and mirrorless part of the equation, which I am sure they are going to do. Whatever the case, it is speculation as to where the camera market is heading.

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Someone already corrected you on the sizes so I wouldn't worry. Yes, they are a big share of the camera market, but they aren't that big as a company.

Let's put it to you this way, in Q4 2010 Nokia had it's highest sales. If someone told you then that within 5 years Nokia and Blackberry would be dead and Apple and Samsung would be the biggest phone manufacturers in the world, people would have laughed them off as being nutcases. The market has the potential to do big things very quickly. I'm not saying it will, but I think to say that "Nikon is safe" is naive. No one is safe, not Apple, not Canon, not Microsoft, no one.

The only thing protecting camera manufacturers is glass, but that protection won't last forever, it will just delay things so it doesn't mean Nikon can afford to make mistakes, it just means they have more time to correct them. The phone market was a 2 year cycle, cameras are about 5-7 years. The market can turn on you quickly. Let's say you have another bad quarter. People get nervous. Some people dump stock. Some people switch because they don't want to be left holding gear, and some people don't buy Nikon because they are nervous because of the negative press. Next year the results of worse as a result of an oversaturated second hand market, low sales and it exacerbates the issue. It becomes harder to turn it around, because you have less capital to invest in new ideas, you've downsized to save money which creates more negative press etc. Yes, it's unrealistic, yes its unlikely to happen, but anymore unrealistic or unlikely than if someone told you about Nokia in 2010? Nokia was still producing very good phones up till the time they disappeared, it just wasn't the phones the market wanted and that's what Nikon need to remember. Producing good gear and producing gear the market want are mutually exclusive.

If Canon produce a hybrid that allows you to flip a switch between optical and digital viewfinder in a second (not like the XPro2, a full hybrid where you get both) as their 1DMK4, Nikon could very quickly find their D5 sales drying quickly if that is what the market decides is the solution. Hell, if Nikon produced a good hybrid then could even steal some of the market back from the mirrorless. The point is, there could be a game changer in the market, we don't know what it is (or if it will be mirrorless) and we don't know who will fall away as a result.

I have no doubt Nikon is taking this seriously, but given the extent of their bad decisions, taking it seriously should involved restructuring from the top down, not getting rid of staff at the bottom.

My comment about Nikon being a huge company is in context of compared to many other companies, especially Australian companies. In other words, they are not some tiny company susceptible to going bankrupt any time soon as they have been very, very profitable for the past 11 out of 12 years. Also, another part of my meaning about Nikon being a huge company is that their camera sales are in the order of magnitude more than Fuji, Olympus etc.

You can't correlate Nokia to Nikon, in fact it is a completely different scenario. The difference between Nokia and Nikon is that part of the Nikon brand is also lenses where millions have huge investment in glass and other things, especially the professional photogs, and can't readily swap out to another camera company just for a slight benefit at a particular model cycle. People can very easily swap out their phone as a new model cycle comes through. There is nothing tying them to their phone. That is the difference. Also, the differences in camera performance between brands and model cycles is minimal and therefore not a real reason to swap brands at a whim.

Canon 1D MK IV has a switchable OVF to EVF? News to me.

As you say, there maybe a game changer in the market, but why does it mean that it is not Nikon? The problem here is all speculation and that speculation affects all camera makers, not just Nikon. In other words, they are all at risk.

A good article:
http://nikonrumors.com/2017/02/14/ni...ymission.aspx/