Who understands Olympus prices?

It really is refreshing to hear someone that understands business and can go beyond "more sales are always better."

Sometimes... less sales are better, especially if the profit margins improve sufficiently.

For example, we all know that CIPA unit shipments have dropped like a rock 79% from their peak of 121 million cameras shipped in 2010 to last year's almost 25 million cameras shipped. And their revenue has also taken a huge hit, dropping 52% from ¥1.6 Billion down to almost ¥800 Million. And the reason that revenue hasn't dropped as much is due to price increases.

But those numbers don't show you another very important statistic... profits.

If you lose 79% of your sales, then that means you also shed 79% of your manufacturing costs. And 79% of your labor costs. And very likely around 79% of all your other fixed costs, like plants, facilities, and marketing personnel.

So, it is entirely possible that profitability can be the same at lower volumes, because so much of your other costs have evaporated. Of course, you still need sufficient volume, but 25 million of anything still qualifies as a mass market.

All you need to do is raise your margins enough, and it seems like every camera maker has done that.

According to the same CIPA data the average camera shipped in 2010 brought in ¥13,529 in revenue. And in 2017 that average camera was ¥31,740. This is a 235% price increase!

That increase in unit revenue wasn't entirely due to price increases, although that was a big part of it. It is also due to losing the bottom of the market. All that is left now is the higher end user, who is willing to pay more to get more.