Nikon stops all activity in Brazil after ending sales in 2017

Hello. I'm also afraid that Nikon's activities are shrinking.
The quantity of gray market products in Brazil is very large. Many users like me (since 1995) are now unsupported, unsupported.

Nikon launched the very successful D850, and now the excellent Z7/Z6... What happens in Brazil is probably due to something specific to the Country, Nikon is still present in Colombia, for example...

Who in their right mind would want to run a business in that socialist crap hole.

There's no such things as Socialist crap holes. There are dictatorships, oligarchies and such that are crap holes, professional and amateur alike.
Some mask themselves from Socialism to fascism.
But what they truly are, little incompetent parasites

Seriously, do you make a post to make sarcasm of people who lost their jobs and other thousands who are affected by a serious economic problem in a country that is ALLY TO THE USA suffers?

Did you take all your meds today?

Not at all Emmanuel. Just pointing out yet another failed experiment in socialism. Many delusional people in the US want to implement it here. They are the ones who you should take offense to. They disregard your failure because they believe they are superior to you. They think their superior intellect will make it a success here. My heart goes out to you and all the other victims of dictators and oligarchs who believe they are the chosen ones who should organize society. Brazil is a beautiful country. I would very much like to visit it, but I am afraid for my safety.

Here is not a good place to discuss politics. Neither Nikon nor Brazil are so important to justify personal offenses.

I understand that knee-jerk reaction, but really what other point is there in the article if we're not going to examine the reasons for an international corporation deciding that an entire country is a failed state not worth doing business with? Are we just supposed to wring our hands and say what a shame and leave it at that? And on the contrary, Brazil and Nikon are very important.

Dear Jack

I apologize if I was rude about the previous post. Now that I understand your point of view, and in part you are totally correct.
Just a correction, our nation is capitalist! Thanks God. The problem is that we had a government with socialist and communist ideology, that being honest can work for very few things. I believe that the two sides should always be heard, but experience shows that a socialist or communist government does not work.

I'm glad you like Brazil, our North American brothers are always very welcome, part of my family is North American as well. So love of the USA is part of me. God bless you.

I saw that besides shooting you like shooting sports, I'm a fan of the Instructor zero, soon he'll be there in the USA. Enjoy is worth a lot.

God Bless the American, all of it because we in South America are in need of his help ... =)

JackM,
Again you're right, government interference is big in some quarters, and unfortunately corruption on the part of the politic can influence companies like NIKON to enter the game or be harmed. There is no discourse in this respect as this is relevant for everyone.

To understand you, our presidential candidate suffered an attack, Jair Mesias Bolsonaro. I have faith that he will win so that our policy is a pride for our nation, and companies like NIKON, Canon, Pentax and others can settle in and grow in South America.

God bless you and All of us americas.

No worries brother. I realize Brazil is a hybrid capitalist society, but like you say, with a government with socialist and communist ambitions. There are many in the US who are under that spell. Indeed, god bless all Americans.

The government is only labelled socialist by people who think that anything that is not laissez-faire capitalism is one step away from the gulag.
Of course JackM doesn't get that America is turning into a failed capitalism experiment and turning into another China, And doesn't quite get corruption affects all political systems.
Careful from what glass house you throw rocks from.
Now then, back to Nikon.

Actually, USA has already demonstrated that socialism works. It's just that the only category of "persons" that it was applied to was corporations.

Leica would disagree...

Leica may disagree, but even if I worked and turned big time, I'll remember who got me there. It's not Leica and don't expect those with long memories and gratitude to look toward them very favorably or first down the road.
And when (not if) the global economy turns south for awhile, what then?

Actually, in the hey day of the Nikon F and F2 the company offered, for a brief time, a camera made by Ricoh with a Nikon badge and quickly dumped it and a fixed lens zoom that lasted only a short time. Finally they came out with the brilliant Nikkormat series. It was only around the 1990s that Nikon tried to be all things to everybody with point and shoots, budget point and shoots, several budget SLRs, not outstanding CoolPix digital, etc. the company totally lost its reputation as a purveyor of premium goods and devalued its marque.

Canon made too many marginally different digicams and series of DSLRs but mostly made high quality PandS cameras, etc. But both companies have succumbed to elephantiasis in their DSLR designs.

I went to Olympus which has been concentrating on well differentiated quality lines,

Rokkorman, your comparison is ridiculous even though one cannot dispute decreasing revenues.
Sony is a multidimensional company that is involved in every aspect of electronics.
Nikon is mostly a camera company, with a few other optical products.
You cannot compare a supermarket with a corner store.
Well, I guess Sony folk can compare whatever they want...

Why is it ridiculous?
Nikon's financial report was all about everything else than photography as they wanted (needed) to show their shareholders they are widening their field and getting into more lucrative business than just selling lenses and cameras.
Sony is already diversified and they have said openly they are willing to spend a good lot of the money into research of cameras and lenses to get an even larger foothold and customer base there.
Why shouldn't Nikon worry and how do you think this equates to the R&D that Sony can put in compared to what Nikon can put in?
Nikon desperately needs to cut where ever they can to fund more development, Sony, as you said yourself; well...

B&H and Amazon take the profit by selling Nikon cameras worldwide. The local authorised dealers of Nikon sell nothing. The local service centre of Nikon earn slim profit by repairing grey market Nikon cameras. Don’t blame Nikon.

Dave, here is why Nikon (and some other camera makers) refuse to service grey market goods.

The official importer is usually a 100% owned subsidiary of the camera maker. So they have a vested interest in discouraging grey market sales. But they also have a vested interest in selling things to grey market distributors. Here is where it gets complicated.

So while Nikon WANTS to sell product to as many people as possible, they also WANT you to buy their product from their authorized dealers. One way to discourage grey market sales is to not provide warranty service. And this makes sense, since the official importer is responsible for warranty work, and there is no reason for them to do work on cameras they didn't sell.

But another method is to refuse to repair grey market goods that are out of warranty. Nikon won't even sell parts to independent repair shops. Nikon chooses this policy, while Olympus does not.

Marty4650: Nowadys many makers offer global warrenty for portable products. If what you said is the fact of Nikon's, they should change rather than just giving up. I think the real reason is that Nikon has big trouble in business administration. The company needs reform.

But neither Nikon nor anybody else can have it both ways. Sure, they want to sell "official" cameras for top dollar and refuse to service gray. (There are also issues with denying internatonal warranties, espcially in EU, UK and Australia/NZ.)

But where do you think the gray cameras come from? And why are unauthorized sellers able to get their hands on the product so cheaply? Yes, there is some overhead with regional distributors and currency fluctuations. But if the manufacturers weren't focused on maximizing the number of units sold, they could close the tap on gray. But at the home office, they don't see it that way.

When you're in good shape, you can absorb this but it may not make sense to do so. The current price difference between a "official" Canon 5D4 and a gray one is almost $1000.

You're being sarcastic or you haven't been paying attention to what's been going on in Brazil for the last couple of decades. Corruption, scandals, poor health and government services, unemployment, all take their tolls.

Leon, i just assumed such progressive forward thinking sicieties would be better off than in America. I mean progressive is supposed to mean "progress"right? If the worlds idea of progress is losing our consumer choices, i'll stick with caveman society.

Come on, man. You can't let partisan politics infect and spoil every part of your life. Keep it separated. Vote and advocate where appropriate, enjoy your hobbies and fellowship at other times. You will find that many folks that differ with you on political issues have much more in common on others. This is photography. All of us are here because we enjoy it and like to learn from and interact with others of like interest. This ain't really that. But it is your life, live it as you choose.

And let's just ignore the pervasive and long time political and social interference of the country from North America, whose initials starts with "U" and ends in "A".
Ex: 1964 Brazilian coup d'état.
In the telegraphs, Ambassador to Brazil Gordon also acknowledges US involvement in "covert support for pro-democracy street rallies…and encouragement [of] democratic and anti-communist sentiment in Congress, armed forces, friendly labor and student groups, church, and business" and that he "may be requesting modest supplementary funds for other covert action programs in the near future."

@realmadeira: What do you mean with "as is"? Broken condition without telling the potential buyer? That would be fraudulent.

New good in most EU countries are also protected by consumer law which adds value on top of the regular warranty. In my opinion, any used product has to be at least 30% of in order for me to want to skip the additional values listed above.

Selling broken things on Ebay is perfectly fine if described properly. That is why it called "as is", meaning "just as described". For instance broken mid-tier DSLR usually goes for 30-50% of the price of the mint. It is often a good business for those with repair skills to buy broken, to fix them and to resell as refurbs

Companies sell their products at different prices in different countries in order to maximize revenues. It's called price discrimination. They do this because they know that customers in countries like the US are more affluent and can afford to pay more than those in Eastern Europe, Africa etc. The grey market arises because third parties try to exploit the difference in price, buying in one country at a low price and selling it at a higher price in a different market. In the past, photo retailers would do this, but nowadays the internet allows almost anyone to sell grey market goods via web sites like amazon and ebay. Manufacturers try to prevent the grey market --- using different model numbers for the same product, refusing to honor warranties out of country etc. -- this hinders, but but does not prevent the flow of goods.

Yes whatever happened to Worldwide Warranty. NIkon ?
As a tourist travelling you cannot buy a DSLR overseas anymore due to your local Nikon not honouring that warranty.

Excellent point. Warranty from any manufacturer should at least match Apple’s, but the fact that it’s not shows us clearly that for certain companies the customer is not important, only profit is. To have warranties restricted to the country or geo of purchase in the 21st century is laughable at best.
Is there any Japanese camera company that has a worldwide warranty in place?

@miric maybe "the best" for soho wireless All-In-One printers ;)

Grey market is not illegal market.
Simply put... the official retail price of a product, is say $100 in US, but $300 in Brasil (because of high taxes and what not). Some small retailers (or even private citizens) simply buy 10 items from US (or below a limit that requires taxes), go to Brasil and sell them there for $150. The product might not have localization for that country or not even warranty (if the manufacturer doesn't offer some global warranty program). But other then that it is a perfectly legal and legit product.

Badi, thanks. However, even so, Nikon got the money and the profit by selling to the GREY supplier. So, how does Nikon lose money/profit so that it has to pull out of Brazil?

Yes, they win money from the grey market. On which they don't have direct influence (for them it is reported as say, US sales). But on the official market there they sell close to nothing, but have to keep stores, service units, etc ... so they loose money.
However the grey market is not going anywhere ...

R$3,999 = US$950

The same article on Petapixel had a Brazilian posting it was often cheaper to fly to Miami and buy cameras and expensive electronics than to buy retail in Brazil. Add in the corruption and dodgy postal service and its hardly a surprise.

The R$3999 ($1852) price for the PS4, while absolutely ridiculous, was only at launch. Today you can find one at around 1/3 that.

@TyphoonTW: the new 2018 MacBook Pro fully-loaded costs $7198 in the US. The same laptop costs $12.895 over here. It's a similar story with iPhones: $849 vs $1313 for a 256GB iPhone 8 plus.

Brazil has four times the population, and over 6 times the GDP of South Africa...so hardly comparable

how many in Brazil can afford a Z and lenses? 0.0001% of the population maybe.

0.0001% x 200,000,000= 20,000

Read what Brazilian photographers have said - that it makes complete sense given the high taxes, competition from cheap grey imports and dodgy postal service.

Correction 0.0001 % x 200 million = 200. I think a realistic estimate would be 1,000,000 potential buyers, but most are happy with smartphones. There are 200 million plus mobile phones on Brazil, so people can buy stuff. The issue is taxes, Nikon should just support wjat they make, no matter where it is sold. Big mistake imo.

It is interesting how did Sony get the status of a favorite brand there making products that are more expensive than from any other company. It is not something new for a developing country. For example in Turkey I noticed that some companies really dominate without any reason except some preferences that they got from the government.

Kharan is right here. Brazil and few other Latin American countries have not only high import taxes, but in some cases requirements for "local manufacturing". I used to work for a major cell phone maker who had to have own assembly line in Brazil and few other Latin American countries for this reason. It was horribly expensive since they could not compete with Asia what comes to manufacturing scale and cost. This all due to protectionist policies there although I wonder what is that local camera industry they are protecting...

Jylppy - Unfortunately, it's not so much protecting as it's lining political officials' pockets. All this red tape in countries like Brazil and Argentina is there to discourage foreign competition, and to profit off wondrously from the few brave souls that make it into the country thanks to bribes.

Sony makes and sells in Brazil, especially TVs. Nothing to do with cameras.

Spot on about the only choice thing. You'd be surprised how all those little developing markets add up.

Brick'n'mortar retail is still big although not profitable. And after-sales support is quite handy for customers, you know. Try to deal with Internet shops there. Amazon is not competitive or present at every country and many developing country "local" / regional internet retailers offer simply horrible customer service and warranty terms. I live in Singapore (not a developing country, but has poor consumer protection laws), but I order from Amazon US so I don't have to deal with Lazada, Qoo10, AliExpress or other Asian miserable e-retailers.