Nikon 2019 Results Down

[CameraQuest]

"Nikon has just published its figures for the first half of the 2019 financial year and it’s looking bleak for the Japanese manufacturer.

The company as a whole has reported year-on-year figures that don’t make for pleasant reading for shareholders: revenue is down 13.3% and operating profit has fallen by 42.9%. Profit before income taxes is down by 40.6%."

https://fstoppers.com/news/nikon-just-released-some-terrible-financial-results-427040?page=1

 

[Larry Cloetta]

Que será, será. Fabulous cameras nonetheless.

 

[Mackinaw]

You got to wonder where the bottom is for the traditional camera manufacturers. Canon's results are similar to Nikon. Rumors are running rampant about Olympus exiting the camera business. Doom and gloom everywhere you look.

JIm b.

 

[heavyweather]

Maybe Nikon could get back into the rangefinder business.

 

[splitimageview]

Wouldn't be surprised if Amazon, Google, or Apple acquire O or N at some point in the near future...

 

[Doug]

That sounds a bit scary for Nikon... Are Pentax/Ricoh and Sony/Minolta/Konica declining in profits as well? Should they venture into the smartphone market to save themselves? 🙂

 

[Pál_K]

Smartphone camera quality ("more than good enough" for most people) plus the phone's inherent social interconnectivity has hurt all dedicated-cameras, including mirrorless. I'd hoped the Z7 and Z6 would have made a bigger difference for Nikon financially.

 

[aizan]

Has Nikon ever thought about the obvious: diversify their business?

 

[Contarama]

Computers are still disrupting life as we knew it. Don't fault Kodak for missing digital...that's not what they missed...the chip was where it was at...

We'll probably always have Nikon cameras...at least for awhile yet I bet

 

[jonmanjiro]

Has Nikon ever thought about the obvious: diversify their business?

Of course they have. Hard to branch out from your areas of core competence and into something new while playing catch up with others who are already well ahead of you in the new area you're aiming at though.

To give you an example, in the race for ever higher resolutions in the manufacture of IC circuits, the leading edge of stepper technology has moved beyond the traditional reticle pattern projected onto a silicon wafer through an objective and into using sources of illumination with wavelengths much shorter than visible light (electron beams, x-rays etc.). Nikon kept at it as long as they could using liquid immersion and other tricks to increase resolution with the traditional setup, but the technology has moved past that now into areas beyond Nikon's core competence. Nikon does visible light well, but x-rays... not so much.

 

[RObert Budding]

Has Nikon ever thought about the obvious: diversify their business?

That's what was behind the conglomerate craze of the 1960's. Then they were broken apart - because shareholders can diversify at lower cost within their investment portfolios.

 

[Ste_S]

Maybe Nikon could get back into the rangefinder business.

They did, briefly. Which ended up with them loosing money on every camera sold (allegedly).

Seriously though, I reckon there's probably three cameras only that Nikon ought to be making (and at a high price, low volume). A pro camera, an enthusiasts camera, and a legacy camera (F or S series). Copy the Leica model for the legacy cameras.

Forget about having multiple lines of the same thing that get yearly incremental updates. Forgot about consumer cams. Those days have gone

 

[Pál_K]

...
Seriously though, I reckon there's probably three cameras only that Nikon ought to be making (and at a high price, low volume). A pro camera, an enthusiasts camera, and a legacy camera (F or S series). Copy the Leica model for the legacy cameras.

Forget about having multiple lines of the same thing that get yearly incremental updates. Forgot about consumer cams. Those days have gone

That makes a lot of sense. The mid-range and entry-level cameras lose out to the cellphones. A single pro camera and an enthusiast camera will sell. There is still a small market for a legacy camera, such as the F6. I give Nikon credit for their romantic-historical-legacy vision by keeping the F6 line alive.