The Staggering Collapse of the Camera Market

[Scatterbrained]

....... .. to the detriment of the employees.

.........

What's your point?

 

[table1349]

You use the yen do you? That is in Dollars. Read the Nikon financial report and convert the listed 43.4 billion yen in corporate earnings into dollars. Their net sales was 857 billion yen or $8,334,174,367 dollars.

You're looking at the whole of Nikon and not just their camera division. Nikon has been doing massive layoffs and cost cutting to even make that income.

And the 1000 jobs that were cut were across the whole of Nikon. Thats 1,000 out of over 30,000 employees.

How many were in the camera division? I'm sure that's a consolation to the families of the 1000

Does it matter? What should they do, maintain excess labor until the entire company collapses? Companies need to be able to expand and contract as the market expands and contracts.

"Companies need to be able to expand and contract as the market expands and contracts." .. to the detriment of the employees.

If you just search Layoffs, or think about it.
Oil industry
Financial industry
europe seems to be just starting a larger downturn ... Major companies announce job cuts across Europe - World Socialist Web Site
don't worry. I'm sure the ECB will continue to buy bonds/debt from the unlimited funds they seem to have.

local automotive seems to be doing good so far though. Many adding jobs.

actually, the automotive industry has been shrinking for a while. Many millennials are not driving and buying cars.
Camera retail has been hurting badly. From 2010 till now, the industry has been shrinking at a rate of about 30% per year.

 

[astroNikon]

ok .... I'm heavily in the auto market here. I see the current profits, and hiring plans as they are taking away people from other industries around here.
United States Total Vehicle Sales | 1993-2016 | Data | Chart | Calendar

China, as you know has expanded like crazy though is currently retracting a bit.
China Total Vehicle Sales | 1997-2016 | Data | Chart | Calendar | Forecast

global ...
Global car sales 1990-2016 | Forecast

Russia on the other hand ....

Having been in the Tier 1 and Tier 2 industry back in 2006 onwards (and OEM before that) I watch for when that arena starts shrinking and tightening. It was quite devastated from 2005 through 2010, but seems to be doing well. Further automation and Tier 1 packaging further pushes down employee counts.

"Many millennials are not driving and buying cars." --> on the other hand --> Millennials Are Buying Cars
--> Everything we thought about millennials not buying cars was wrong
though --> Millennials don't want cars, but Generation Z does

 

[table1349]

ok .... I'm heavily in the auto market here. I see the current profits, and hiring plans as they are taking away people from other industries around here.
United States Total Vehicle Sales | 1993-2016 | Data | Chart | Calendar

China, as you know has expanded like crazy though is currently retracting a bit.
China Total Vehicle Sales | 1997-2016 | Data | Chart | Calendar | Forecast

global ...
Global car sales 1990-2016 | Forecast

Russia on the other hand ....

Having been in the Tier 1 and Tier 2 industry back in 2006 onwards (and OEM before that) I watch for when that arena starts shrinking and tightening. It was quite devastated from 2005 through 2010, but seems to be doing well. Further automation and Tier 1 packaging further pushes down employee counts.

"Many millennials are not driving and buying cars." --> on the other hand --> Millennials Are Buying Cars
--> Everything we thought about millennials not buying cars was wrong
though --> Millennials don't want cars, but Generation Z does

Please don't confuse him with facts. We all know that there is only a limited amount of bandwidth and once it is gone the whole internet will implode. A millennial told me so on the internet so it must be true. Gotta go now, I'm meeting a French model for lunch.

 

[astroNikon]

....... .. to the detriment of the employees.

.........

What's your point?

Employees lose their jobs .. aka unemployment whether temporary / contract or full time.
Mass Loss of jobs usually also coincide with a reduction in local economic spending. As local economies can be affected by large employers can also cause waves in that local economy, which can create job migration.

Just look at isolated industries in isolated locales for those effects ==> From boom to bust, big changes in ND oil
Or even restaurants that surround a 3 shift automotive plant.

 

[astroNikon]

Please don't confuse him with facts. We all know that there is only a limited amount of bandwidth and once it is gone the whole internet will implode. A millennial told me so on the internet so it must be true. Gotta go now, I'm meeting a French model for lunch.

ookie dookie

just that Business Economics education and stuff coming out ...
Al Gore just called too .. so I have to lay off the internet for a while.

 

[robbins.photo]

just that Business Economics education and stuff coming out ...
Al Gore just called too .. so I have to lay off the internet for a while.

Nice that somebody is keeping track of your carbon footprint. You really should send Al a nice thank you note. Or maybe a fruit basket...

 

[astroNikon]

just that Business Economics education and stuff coming out ...
Al Gore just called too .. so I have to lay off the internet for a while.

Nice that somebody is keeping track of your carbon footprint. You really should send Al a nice thank you note. Or maybe a fruit basket...

He told me if I contact him again he'll have me arrested.
I'll just contact him with your contact information instead and tell him he's a fruit basket.

 

[robbins.photo]

He told me if I contact him again he'll have me arrested.
I'll just contact him with your contact information instead and tell him he's a fruit basket.

Arrested? Really?

Wow.. he must like you. He told me if I tried contacting him again he'd have me killed. That Al.. he's such a zany madcap really...

 

[The Barbarian]

Hmmm... Ricoh/Pentax increased camera sales about 50% last year. O.K., nearly 5% of the industry total to a little over 7%, but good for them.

 

[table1349]

Please don't confuse him with facts. We all know that there is only a limited amount of bandwidth and once it is gone the whole internet will implode. A millennial told me so on the internet so it must be true. Gotta go now, I'm meeting a French model for lunch.

ookie dookie

just that Business Economics education and stuff coming out ...
Al Gore just called too .. so I have to lay off the internet for a while.

 

[thereyougo!]

Pentax isn't even in the fight. They're just struggling just to survive. So many camera stores have gone under.

You really should consider getting one of those "The End is Nigh" sandwich boards.

 

[TCampbell]

The thing I dont get is why camera manufacturers dont learn from camera - phones.

Think of a DSLR with built in Operating system that supports 4G / Wi-Fi / 500px / Instagram / snapchat / facebook etc.

Why not??

I'm not entirely certain I'd want such features in a camera. If you have a smartphone, you can take the photo, edit the photo, and then post the photo. But if you have a camera and you're serious about the quality of your photos (and if you have a DSLR there's a good chance you are) then you probably want to tweak the image before sharing it rather than have the camera just upload it "as is".

So you could add photo editing apps to the camera... but this reminds me of the time when car manufacturers realized people wanted phones in their cars... so they started offering integrated cellphones for the cars. The "problem" was the manufacturer just offered you ONE phone model. Mobile phones are like fashion... people don't want to be told what one thing to wear, they want to pick it out based on their own needs & taste. The same would be true of image editing apps... I don't want a manufacturer thrusting their idea of an image editing app on me and telling me that if I use their camera then I have to use their app because it's all integrated to shoot, edit, and post.

What I really want is something that will let me "shoot", and easily transfer the image to a device of my choosing... edit it there (and honestly... I am NOT going to edit photos a 3" screen on the back of a camera), and then upload it to possibly multiple locations.

I really like Apple's model in that I can add information (such as a photo) from any device and within moments it shows up on every other device.

But there is a catch... most carriers don't truly allow unlimited and unimpeded data volume. Even "unlimited" plans tend to hit the brakes and slow down your data speeds after you exceed some threshold (even if they don't charge you more) and most plans still are not unlimited and have overage charges. That means when I'm "out" shooting, I really don't want the camera to just start syncing everything. I'd rather wait for it to be on a WiFi connection to do that.

Apple does have a slick protocol build into their devices that allows two devices that are both trusted to auto-detect each other via Bluetooth (bluetooth is very low power, but also very slow) and then use Bluetooth to negotiate a peer-to-peer WiFi connection which can then do a high-speed transfer. That way you don't have to leave the WiFi connect all the time (wasting power) but it's painless to establish. Usually it "just works". Now THAT would be something I'd be interested in because most WiFi cameras are still cumbersome to use when it comes to establishing the WiFi connection.

Keeping with openness (something most camera makers are definitely NOT good at doing)... it'd be great if the camera was an IoT device with published REST-based APIs so that it wouldn't really matter what "other" apps you want to use... anybody could code against the published API.

 

[table1349]

I want my camera to be able to brew me a good cup of coffee and do my taxes for me. Now those would be useable features.

 

[ClickAddict]

Hmmm... Ricoh/Pentax increased camera sales about 50% last year. O.K., nearly 5% of the industry total to a little over 7%, but good for them.

Actually gaining in Market share does not necessarily mean they increased their sales.

Year 1.
Total market sales is $1000
Company A sells 100$ worth (so 10% of market)
Company B sells 200$ worth (20%)
Company C sells 200$ worth (20%)
Company D sells 500$ worth (50%)

Year 2
Total market sales is $200
Company A sells 50$ worth (so 25% of market)
Company B sells 50$ worth (25%)
Company C sells 50$ worth (25%)
Company D sells 50$ worth (25%)

Every company had fewer sales. Company A had increase in Market share but decrease by 1/2 of it's sales.

I suspect that is what you are seeing with Pentax.