Reading mode: Light Dark

More bad news from Olympus

Go to last post
Maybe the high speed lenses they're gonna be offering shortly will perk things up for Olympus.
--
better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission
 
"Kikukawa said the company would bolster its line-up of high-priced compact cameras"...
Would this mean there WILL be folo-ups for the C8080 and 7070... ??
 
much as i would welcome a follow up (improved: somewhat quicker, physically larger senor c8080---not necessarily more mp) to the c8080, i really doubt that this would be a good move for the bottom line. i still don't understand the raison d'etre for the c7070.

it's a shame, really, but a reality that this overall digicam market is fueled by a lot of middle of the road product, not pure excellence for its own sake. it's about mass appeal. but these are corporations with shareholders----they must come first, and the market analysts are watching. oly isn't the only one struggling.
 
Olympus is the world's fourth-largest digital camera firm after Canon Inc. , Sony Corp. and Eastman Kodak , but is considered one of the industry's weaker players because of inefficient production and a relatively weak brand.

[ quote]

I thought Nikon were 4th! Wrong again! I wonder if they measured just Oly's camera division or the whole Olympus corporation.
KS Chew said:
http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/050511/3/3sgpe.html
Click to expand...
--

'Silence! What is all this insolence? You will find yourself in gladiator school vewy quickly with wotten behaviour like that.'
Click to expand...
 
I believe that they are talking about total camera sales, which are dominated by compact digicams, not SLRs. In that, Nikon probably comes after Sony, Canon, Kodak, Olympus and FujiFilm, and I do not know where they are relative to Pentax or Konica-Minolta.

None of that has much to do with the DSLR sector though, where it seems to be a fairly clear order of Canon, Nikon, Olympus and Pentax, with all others well back.
 
That ranking is based on unit sales, not the size of the company or market cap or anything like that..

I wouldn't be surprised if Nikon jumps up to #4 for 2005. Their new set of Coolpixes are very competitively priced and appear to be selling well. And having three versions of the D70 out there at various price-points/bundles also helps. Thanks to the D70 Nikon passed Fuji in 2004. While DSLRs were only a small fraction of digital camera sales in 2004, they were a significant % for Nikon thanks to the populatiry of the D70. Having three of them at overall lower prices in 2005 would help as well.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1000&message=13303482
krusadr said:
Olympus is the world's fourth-largest digital camera firm after
Canon Inc. , Sony Corp. and Eastman Kodak , but is considered one
of the industry's weaker players because of inefficient production
and a relatively weak brand.

[ quote]

I thought Nikon were 4th! Wrong again! I wonder if they measured
just Oly's camera division or the whole Olympus corporation.
KS Chew said:
http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/050511/3/3sgpe.html
Click to expand...
--
'Silence! What is all this insolence? You will find yourself in
gladiator school vewy quickly with wotten behaviour like that.'
Click to expand...
--
My brand new photography blog: http://www.livejournal.com/users/photographyetc/
 
Time will show that the D70s was one of Nikon's greater blunders. When they should be coming out with a replacement for the D100, they do a side step. Now Nikon is a at least eighteen months behind Canon. When they finally do come out with a D200, Canon will already have its replacement ready.

Olympus' position is different from Nikon. They are trying to sell a new format that, on the whole, is not going too well. The main reason is that their lenses are too expensive and they first camera had way too low a megapixel count to attact pros.

Don

--
'Imagination is more important than knowledge.' Einstein
 
KS Chew said:
http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/050511/3/3sgpe.html
Click to expand...
LACK OF POPULAR PRODUCTS

At a briefing on Tuesday, Olympus President Tsuyoshi Kikukawa blamed the company's failure to launch popular cameras in a timely fashion, such as the ultra-thin models with large liquid crystal displays that have been especially popular in Japan."

Olympus can't help it if the Japanese have as poor a taste in type of
digital cameras they prefer (I heard, "yuck" digital cam phones are really
big there) as they do in audio equipment.
--
-Rich
 
Is true and the cameras are too big.The 4/3 format is half of the old half frame of the 35mm.I hope in the future to see a 4/3 camera the size of the late Olimpus Pen F.
--
zeev
 
the sad thing for us who care about excellence and quality in cameras/photog equip is that for larger public companies thiese criteria are not necessarily the big money makers. in olympus' case they are clearly stating that their own analysis has concluded that they have partly missed the boat on the mania for faddish gadgetry that appeals to their own domestic market. this emphasis on that market is interesting----does anybody have some numbers about japan's consumer markets for stuff like this? that would help in this thread.
 
tex said:
in olympus'
case they are clearly stating that their own analysis has concluded
that they have partly missed the boat on the mania for faddish
gadgetry that appeals to their own domestic market. this emphasis
on that market is interesting----does anybody have some numbers
about japan's consumer markets for stuff like this? that would
help in this thread.
Click to expand...
Partly this emphasis on the home market is a by-product of the fact that you've got Japanese journalists talking to Japanese executives. In some cases, these stories originate with Japanese news organizations and get translated and syndicated for foreign distribution in various languages, and in other cases the originating news organization (especially if its Bloomberg or Reuters et. al.) will have intended all along to translate and re-distribute the story. But still, it's Japanese execs in Japan speaking in Japanese to Japanese journalists. And a major target of these comments is Japanese investment analysts who, quite naturally, know a lot more about the Japanese home market than they do about foreign markets.

In general, the Japanese photo market is smaller than the U.S. market or the European Union. In some narrower cases, especially with new product categories, it is sometimes, for short periods of time, the biggest -- i.e. I think the Japanese market for digicams was bigger than either the U.S. or Europe for the first year or two of the digital photography boom (late 1990s) even though the overall photo market was smaller there.

All that said, Japanese companies do tend to view the gadget-crazy, feature-craving Japanese consumer as a good bellweather of what will sell, and my own personal opinion is that this has had a somewhat baleful influence on camera technology and design, especially since 1990 or so. I've always felt that this has been a significant factor contributing to all the mostly useless bells and whistles that clutter up most current cameras.

These are all matters of degree, though. Western companies have been piling useless features on to products, and then marketing them like crazy, for decades, too.
 
Olympus' 3:4 aspect ratio is doomed. While they make good cameras an lenses, both their SLR cameras and lenses need three things to be successful on the market:

1. Get 2:3 aspect ratio, so that people would be able to print 4x6" pictures without cropping

2. Come down in price significantly , especially for longer lenses. 150mm is not 300mm no matter how you slice it, so there's no reason why it should have the same price as other manufacturers' 300mm.

3. Implement some kind of optical stabilization technology. Nikon, Canon and Minolta have it. It looks like optical stabilization is pretty much a must these days. At least freakin' promise it so that Oly shooters would have something to look forward to.
 
Current situation is approximately one third each Europe Asia and America (all in) in this order.

Asian market would have guided Olympus to splashproof and dustproof products, and is looking for smaller cameras.
European market is looking for quality and durability of construction.

Americans tend to buy on specs, a lot is sold by mail order, and price, regardless of durability and quality (XT etc).
 
Eamon Hickey said:
But still, it's Japanese execs in Japan
speaking in Japanese to Japanese journalists. And a major target of
these comments is Japanese investment analysts who, quite
naturally, know a lot more about the Japanese home market than they
do about foreign markets.
Click to expand...
right, that should have occurred to me. dumb, on my part.
peripheralfocus said:
All that said, Japanese companies do tend to view the gadget-crazy,
feature-craving Japanese consumer as a good bellweather of what
will sell, and my own personal opinion is that this has had a
somewhat baleful influence on camera technology and design,
especially since 1990 or so. I've always felt that this has been a
significant factor contributing to all the mostly useless bells and
whistles that clutter up most current cameras.
Click to expand...
glad to see someone agrees with me on this one!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Keyboard shortcuts

f
Forum
m
My threads
Mobile site
About
Editorial content
Cameras & Lenses
Community
All content, design, and layout are Copyright © 1998–2025 Digital Photography Review All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction in whole or part in any form or medium without specific written permission is prohibited.
When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission.
©GPS Media - Guides, Products, Services.
Back
Top