Panasonic reported as planning $630m stake in beleaguered Olympus

I hope everyone understands just how interrelated these two companies are with the 4/3rds. I know the flash controls for Panasonic are made by Oly and obviously the sensors for Oly are made by Panasonic. I would guess, they share a lot more items than that. Kill Oly, and it most likely will cause a huge loss at Panasonic and might even kill 4/3rds.

As Panasonic is also not profitable, one wonders how this will end up effecting Panasonic. Say Fuji buys into Oly, and they make Oly's sensors and Panasonic then takes a huge loss in their sensor business.

Even worse, say someone else buys Oly, and just kills the camera division (which would make great sense, as Oly's camera division has been loosing money)?

Panasonic would be hit with huge losses and might also be out of the 4/3rds business.

For Panasonic to not be interested in investing in Oly can only mean they have some other plan.. wonder what it is?

Good-bye, Olympus.

The last company that Panasonic invested in was SANYO, and Panasonic had killed it off good and proper. Good luck being able to buy any SANYO branded closed circuit video camera or video projection gear today. Same thing will happen to Olympus. It was good while it lasted for them, though.

The breadth of µ4/3rd's system, born from having two companies developing first-party products (and a few accessories manufacturers making µ4/3rd's mount stuff), is one of the greatest strengths over the other mirrorless systems. I can't tell what this will result in... it might've been cheaper for Panasonic to just buy Oly's photography assets, and probably the investment would not have been enough money to buy out the medical imaging department.

Why would panasonic expand into that industry anyway? Their market is consumer electronics. They might as well go into the ATM Banking market as much as they would go into medical imaging.

Most likely they invested because of their common link, they want to keep Oly alive because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Could this be some sort of sentimental move to keep µ4/3rds interesting?

Hope they bring out an XZ-2 before reorganization time.

So Panasonic might buy the medical side and allow Olympus to sink or swim with its camera division?

Both the reports are true then after a fashion.

$630 million is way too much to pay simply to protect m4/3. It would probably be cheaper to let m4/3 die altogether. Not that I think Oly's place in that partnership is essential at this point. If anything, it leaves Panasonic in a position to pick up the Oly owners who have already invested in m4/3 glass.

The medical business is the real target, whoever might invest/acquire. If cameras don't fit the new owner's plans, they'll be spun-off in a blink.

If someone like Sony buys Oly... Everyone here assumes the only possible motive is to stifle competition, but buying into m4/3 is also a way to increase market share. Kill it altogether, and there's no telling where Oly's customers would go next. The real competition is mirrorless vs. DSLR, not m4/3 vs. NEX. The more excitement and innovation there is in mirrorless, the better.

What I doubt (but you never know) is that the m4/3 partnership agreement is written in such a way that either partner is up the creek if the other is sold.

Who cares? really.
companies come and go, so do people and money.

I also read that Olympus laid off approx. 2500 workers (7% labor force) in their camera division. I think I will put off ordering that new OM-D.

Panasonic denied the report? wow lol. Wonder where this came from then.

Panasonic is not a "rival camera maker" from Olympus' vantage? Will it maintain manufacture of the Olympus cameras just for the sake of "fair play," so that Lumix market share or margins not grow too much? Is Panasonic faced with a surfeit of profits these days?

The profitable medical imaging business is not of strategic interest?

More likely, Panasonic is interested in the medical imaging sector as a growth opportunity, and will "manage" the Olympus camera business to reduce competition by holding back production or elimination of redundancies and overlap. Some consumer P&S will models simply phase out. The GH3 body will be more expensive than the OMD EM5, but all m4/3 lenses and accessories will remain premium priced and relatively scarce.

Panasonic has just scrapped their billions of investment in the plasma factory but yet spared billions buying into camera (and medical) business...
Photography is still a good business though chronologically much older than the electronics industry!

as a business cameras are pretty irrelevant to olympus compared to the medical side of things....microscopes/scanners etc

I have a mixed analysis on this, especially how it could affect the micro4/3 market going forward. On one side it might stabilize, and reduce the risk of Olympus, in a worse case scenario, backing out of the 4/3 market.

But on the other the side, competition and innovation could decline, essentially making m4/3 a single-sourced product like the other camera manufacturers.

Good move IMHO... too many competitors in this "second tier" strata of photo industry players... combining the two would result in a larger player capable of moving up to the top tier maybe! And some great cameras as well.

Perhaps as the largest shareholder, Panasonic can make Olympus less of a direct competitor in 4/3 and more of a complementary one.

Makes sense. No need for a camera manufacturer to buy a camera manufacturer but medical stuff is entirely different. People will say "I'll buy that new Olympus camera when the price drops" but hospitals and research labs just buy what they need and pay what it costs.

Makes perfect sense. I have always said if Olympus Imaging went down, Panasonic would buy them.

Disappointing that the board was replaced wholesale. I think there is plenty of cronyism and opaque management in Japanese style management that is demonstrated in the Olympus debacle.