Nikon might go belly up?

I agree, reservedly, with the subject line. Ultimately (though probably not this year), I think Nikon will be one of the losers. Like it or not, I suspect that the winners in the camera world will be Canon, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony. I also think some smaller speciality brands will hang on to their niche markets - Leica, Hasselblad. I have hopes for Olympus, but this year has been a downer to be sure. Anything can happen.

--
yukonchris
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisnorth/

Batteries rus said:

Sergey,

What is it exactly that "is all over"?

Can you bit more specific about your header "Re: It is all over .."?

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All over the news I meant, even those who know nothing about the cameras read about Olympus. Nothing like this is about Nikon. So one can conclude that one company is good (at least they have not been caught yet), where is the other is crooked. It was in response to your comment about "how do you know". Well we don't, but we still can talk about what we read, can't we.

--
- sergey

If Olympus have been able to hide such a huge loss and still survive during all those years, believe me they must have had a real financial solidity behind, and certainly had lots of cash. Other very big companies who have tried to make similar things (Enron, Worldcom, Lernout & Hauspie etc) during much less than a decade are not existing anymore.

i best get some pennies together and get a final body from them, DX or FX?
--
i like turtles

OP here...

A couple of points which may or may not add weight to the article author's views:

• Look back through his posts, M4/3 is his favourite portrait camera. One point to Olympus.

• Look further back, he switched from C to N. One point to Nikon.

The object of the post I guess was simply: I wasn't aware Nikon was so exposed. If his facts are right.

Regards
Max P

neil1c2000 said:

Raist3d said:

it makes it right

--

Raist3d/Ricardo (Photographer, software dev.)- "You are taking life too seriously if it bugs you in some way that a guy quotes himself in the .sig quote" - Ricardo

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That's kinda the way most of us feel about what you say.

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At least the ones that seem to have a bit of a brain

neil1c2000 said:

--
Neil C

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--

Raist3d/Ricardo (Photographer, software dev.)- "You are taking life too seriously if it bugs you in some way that a guy quotes himself in the .sig quote" - Ricardo

Batteries rus said:

Jeff,

so did Olympus for the last twenty odd years. So how can you state this with such certainty.

OR are you privvy to information that the rest of us here do not have?

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Financial data is widely available, for example

http://markets.ft.com/research/Markets/Tearsheets/Financials?s=7731:TYO

You'll see that Nikon had a rough period with losses and negative cash flow in 2009-10, but so did Canon, Panasonic, and Olympus.

Nikon is getting 38% gross margin on its products (compared to Canon 48% Panasonic 26% Oly 45% Sony 21%), has debt that is 16% of its total capital (compared to Canon 1.5%, Panasonic 38%, Oly 82% Sony 27%), and is generally making money and cash.

Canon looks stronger than Nikon financially, but then they look strong versus everyone. Nikon is no slouch, comparing favorably to Panasonic, Oly, and Sony. Of these, Sony is having a rough period and Oly is in the midst of a governance crisis.

The consensus forecast for Nikon is generally positive, though not as strong as Canon. Here's a summary of the analyst reports as I would rank them

Buy/Outperform/Hold/Underperform/Sell

3/16/1/0/0 -- Canon
5/5/9/1/0 -- Nikon
2/7/9/2/0 -- Panasonic
1/5/9/2/1 -- Sony
0/0/3/2/1 -- Olympus

This is consistent with balance sheets, earnings, and stock performance. Canon and Nikon are outperforming the others.

That's why I say that the report cited by the OP is way off-base. The data is there for everyone to see. Is the data accurate? The wise person will always be careful, even skeptical, but not paranoid.

Batteries rus said:

Jeff said:

"Nikon has a solid balance sheet".

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Batteries rus said:

Jeff

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jck_photos/sets/
http://jeffkantor.zenfolio.com/

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--
Bill

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--
Jeff

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jck_photos/sets/
http://jeffkantor.zenfolio.com/

Max Pegler said:

OP here...

A couple of points which may or may not add weight to the article author's views:

• Look back through his posts, M4/3 is his favourite portrait camera. One point to Olympus.

• Look further back, he switched from C to N. One point to Nikon.

The object of the post I guess was simply: I wasn't aware Nikon was so exposed. If his facts are right.

Click to expand...

His facts are not right. He's extremely myopic, confusing short term business problems with financial viability. See my note above http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1022&message=40002871

Nikon may not be as strong as Canon, but both viable businesses with considerable financial strength.

Max Pegler said:

Regards
Max P

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--
Jeff

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jck_photos/sets/
http://jeffkantor.zenfolio.com/

Ok so most of his predictions aren't actually predictions as they are actually no-brainers or have already been happening, he seems to be a bit behind ha! Though I do understand that it's more fun to make bold predictions so I can't knock him for that but i'll comment on some. The fact that nikon could go belly-up is a bit silly though and even if that were a possiblity, nikon's name and legacy would continue to live on as they would be a HIGHLY desired operation that many company's would love to own - far more desired than olympus imo.

"7. We will see an announcement by a major camera manufacturer of the intent to ship cameras that contain micro SSD drives."

Well. . .i'm not so sure about this. MLC Flash memory IS the same thing, it's already here but the difference is resiliance.The whole point of ssd is to provide fast and stable and constant simultaneous read and write activity on massive amounts of data which is mainly required for operating systems like windows and mac and so budget flash cards have difficulty doing this OR aren't made to do it on the long run. Cameras don't use memory in the same way a computer does and we have the constant need to carry our memory and transfer it constantly, to require a camera to be connected to transfer photos and to give that camera to an art director and various other people just isn't practical. In many studio environments it's common to shoot tethered anyway and on the field it's imperitive to have the convenience of fast, rugged removable memory - taking out a flash card, putting it in your pocket and putting a new one in for example. SSD's are small but they're also much larger than a flash card, they get hotter and need more power to drive and shrinking them to the size of a cf or sd card would mean you'd just have an mlc standard card which already exists. With ssd's the room is there for the speed and stability through onboard memory management.

"8. Apple will announce the end of life date for the MacPro. Laptops will be the new desktops and tablets will be the new laptops."

So it's obvious that he believes every media professional only uses apple or that apple is the majority of the computing market when it's not. Tablets are devices mainly used for computing in a leisurely way. They aren't portable workstations, laptops are. There isn't much else to be said about that! I do see apple deviating away from the creative's preference niche it has had, the tide is changing as more and more people who grew up building computers and such refuse to give up that advantage and editing programs like photoshop are no longer pioritizing for apple, 64bit and gpu support came to windows a full year or two ahead of mac for example and for apple devitating away from it's niche and going more into the mainstream makes sense as that's where the money is. I'm not starting an apple vs windows argument, it's just that I work with both and i'm not blind to what's happening either. The ability to build your own workstation, buy parts off the shelf immediately incase something fails, upgrade at will and save a ton of money doing so is a huge benefit especially to media professionals that require a specific solution and especially as budgets are squeezed.

Max Pegler said:

Interesting prediction here @ No.1

http://photofocus.com/2011/12/04/10-photography-predictions-for-2012/

A side observation is that when I bought my OM2 in the 80s, the big two were Nikon & Olympus as I recall.

Regards
Max P

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--
Oldschool Evolt shooter

His claim:

"A major camera maker in Japan will either fail as a company, face reorganization, bankruptcy, or be acquired by a larger company. While all the Japanese camera companies are having problems, Nikon and Olympus are least able to sustain long-term trouble but it may be some other company as well. As for Nikon and Olympus, each is a fraction of the size of Canon, not nearly as well diversified, and rely on fast turn on inventory for survival. Olympus is more diversified than Nikon. Only 16 percent of its revenue comes from cameras."

Oly obviously is in trouble, but Nikon? It has showed profits in all sectors even during the worse period in 2009. The dslr sales jumped from 3 million 3 years ago to 5.4 million the current year (likely a little less after the Thailand flooding, but productions has been started and it's supposed to reach pre-flooding levels by March 2012).

The sell like 6-7 million lenses every year. And are 3rd in P&S cameras, behind Canon and Sony. And their System 1 is selling quite well in the US at least (right now, on the compact system camera list, J1 shows in position 2 for cameras: http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Camera-Photo-Compact-System-Cameras-Lenses/zgbs/photo/3230476011 ).

So where did this guy get this from? Nikon is not a "fraction of Canon", it's 1/3 to 1/4 in overall sales, but they concentrate in optical and precision instruments. BTW, they make the steppers that Intel, Sony and others use to make their chips.

So, unless Nikon is hiding some ugly skeleton in the closet as Oly was, just can't see how this prediction could be realized.
--
Renato.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhlpedrosa/
OnExposure member
http://www.onexposure.net/

Good shooting and good luck
(after Ed Murrow)

rhlpetrus said:

His claim:

"A major camera maker in Japan will either fail as a company, face reorganization, bankruptcy, or be acquired by a larger company. While all the Japanese camera companies are having problems, Nikon and Olympus are least able to sustain long-term trouble but it may be some other company as well. As for Nikon and Olympus, each is a fraction of the size of Canon, not nearly as well diversified, and rely on fast turn on inventory for survival. Olympus is more diversified than Nikon. Only 16 percent of its revenue comes from cameras."

Oly obviously is in trouble, but Nikon? It has showed profits in all sectors even during the worse period in 2009. The dslr sales jumped from 3 million 3 years ago to 5.4 million the current year (likely a little less after the Thailand flooding, but productions has been started and it's supposed to reach pre-flooding levels by March 2012).

The sell like 6-7 million lenses every year. And are 3rd in P&S cameras, behind Canon and Sony. And their System 1 is selling quite well in the US at least (right now, on the compact system camera list, J1 shows in position 2 for cameras: http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Camera-Photo-Compact-System-Cameras-Lenses/zgbs/photo/3230476011 ).

So where did this guy get this from? Nikon is not a "fraction of Canon", it's 1/3 to 1/4 in overall sales, but they concentrate in optical and precision instruments. BTW, they make the steppers that Intel, Sony and others use to make their chips.

So, unless Nikon is hiding some ugly skeleton in the closet as Oly was, just can't see how this prediction could be realized.
--
Renato.

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Great analysis!

Just want to add that it would make a lot of sense (at least on paper) for Canon to combine its own struggling lithography business with Nikon's, so they can better compete with Netherland's ASML.

10. There will be a major failure in the cloud computing space that causes photographers (and other digital data users) to rethink storing valuable images/data in the cloud.

This is my main prediction. The Cloud is the next major internet disaster. Anyone that thinks the Cloud is secure is ignoring reality. The danger is not from the ego based hackers who want to prove how smart they are, it is from surreptitious operations that may obtain the stored data without the hosting companies even knowing that it has been done. Intelligence organizations throughout the world are able to do this now.

Sergey_Green said:

Batteries rus said:

Sergey,

What is it exactly that "is all over"?

Can you bit more specific about your header "Re: It is all over .."?

Click to expand...

All over the news I meant, even those who know nothing about the cameras read about Olympus. Nothing like this is about Nikon.

--
- sergey

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Indeed. It's like a free advertising. Now everyone knows Olympus. I bet in the midst of that "everyone" in the whole world even if the tiniest fraction fell sympathy or curious enough to buy Oly's cam.... that would be massive.

Oly's camera division is still healthy I guess.

JACOB

normally, "predictions" mean someone is making a bet about the future

the guy you're linking to, certainly isn't

let's see a few:

• "failure of a major manufacturer".

Well based on just publicly available information, we know that Olympus board have (1) put away large sums of money in a tax-haven, and (2) have fudged the accounts so that the underlying financial reality at Olympus is ugly. They may well make only a small part of their revenues from cameras (and that division loses money, even including the accounting cheat) but the big question is, what happens once you need to provision huge amounts, your balance sheet cannot take it, and your Board has lost all credibility? Exacly, you get taken over by someone.

And Nikon? Their financial health is better, and there's no fraud. But certainly DSLRs are a dying market, and the "1" seems like a major strategic mistake. So yes, over time, one could question Nikon's survival, at least their Imaging Products which is about 3/4ths of revenues and pretty much all the profit

• "DSLRs losing share"

That's not a prediction - it's happening today, big time. Even people like me, happy owner of a D7k and a couple good lenses, just hate the bulk, weight, the sloooow CDAF, and the PDAF that's precise only after you've calibrated it. Everyone is so looking forward to lighter smaller tools, and these tools already exist and their IQ matches that of DSLRs and even their continuous AF performance is starting to match mid-range DSLRs

And so on. Nothing new here.

What is interesting or even faintly true about this incredibly stupid prediction? For pity's sake...

tissunique said:

What is interesting or even faintly true about this incredibly stupid prediction? For pity's sake...

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That its so incredibly stupid.

--
Collin

(Aficionado Olympus DSLR )

http://collinbaxter.zenfolio.com/

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. (George Carlin)

New Seventh Wonder of the World.

Raist3d said:

or all are a bit of "next year there will be floods, earthquakes and hurricanes."

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I absolutely agree. I'm surprised everyone is putting this much effort into such mainstream "predictions" that are hardly news to anyone, let alone shocking. While reading them I couldn't help, but think about those History Channel 'Doomsday Prediction' shows (you know the ones) that reveal the very vague and general nature of some prophets.

Nikon is part of the Mitsubishi group. So the notion of how diversified they are or how large they are relative to Canon and Olympus is purely a function of what level in the coporate structure you are considering.

BillZM said:

Nikon is part of the Mitsubishi group. So the notion of how diversified they are or how large they are relative to Canon and Olympus is purely a function of what level in the coporate structure you are considering.

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Nikon is part of the Mitsubishi keiretsu, but that's not the same thing as being a wholly are partially owned subsidiary in the US sense.

The major shareholders in Nikon (a publically traded company) --

The Master Trust Bank of Japan, Ltd. (Trust Account) 7.95%
Japan Trustee Services Bank, Ltd. (Trust Account) 6.80%
JPMorgan Chase Bank 380055 6.13%
Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company 5.19%
State Street Bank and Trust Company 5.00%
Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation 2.30%
Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co., Ltd. 2.17%
Nippon Life Insurance Company 1.99%
The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd. 1.86%

Approximately 30% of shares are owned by foreign (non-Japanese) investors. Additional detail is available here --

http://www.nikon.com/about/ir/stock_info/status/index.htm

--
Jeff

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jck_photos/sets/
http://jeffkantor.zenfolio.com/

Sounds more like someone trying to drive web traffic with an alarmist headline.

True, that Nikon can be vulnerable, because they aren't particularly diversified - cameras are all they do, plus side journeys with binoculars, rifle scopes, and a few other optical items.

Olympus has a medical division that pretty much owns the endoscope segment. If they can survive the scandal, they should be in good shape. Leica is heavy into manufacturing, they build precision measuring equipment that's highly in demand for automated production, which provides the bulk of their income. Canon is into a lot of things, though one of their largest sources of income, laser and inkjet printer engines, are in a declining market. Sony and Panasonic make cameras almost as a sideline. Ricoh is into a lot of other things, too.

Nikon's current camera product line is quite strong, and they are actively developing it on several fronts, including micro. The only thing that could threaten them is a major shift in photography technology that they can't adapt to quickly - they don't have much else to fall back on. Such a shift, though, is highly unlikely, and if it were to occur, there's a good chance that Nikon would be developing it.