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Pentax drops medium format digital
Filed in Photo business - May 10, 2007If this thread is to be believed, then Pentax is scrapping its medium format digital ambitions. The underlying story on Nikkei Net Interactive is definitely there, but I can’t read it because it is a subscription site.
I’m not sure that this is bad news exactly, as they seem to be going to concentrate on their dSLR range. The resources needed to bring a successful larger camera to market would be a burden.
Update: a babelfish of the original article says: “Besides the fact that the Tokyo Itabasi Ku head office is sold, it withdraws low from profit business e.g., development of the digital camera for the professional is discontinued.” With thanks to Oren Grad.
Pentax is under the axe to perform for its shareholders. Sparx Asset Management is its largest shareholder and is demanding better returns. The whole Hoya-Pentax merger, takeover, jv has been a bit of a farce. Two board members were forced to resign by Pentax old guard upset at the prospect of merging with Hoya.
As you note, Pentax plans to stop developing ‘professional’ digital cameras. It’s also looking to sell its head office building and surrounding land for around 12b yen (about 50.6m in your pounds, shillings and pence). They’re also thinking of pulling out of printer and scanning manaufacturing (?). There is money to be made in medical optics – endoscopes/colonscopes etc. (As a crohns sufferer I am picky about my optics in that area and a recent colonoscopy was performed using Olympus optics. As a Pentax user I was not happy but the doctor came highly recommended (and she was very gentle) and at least it wasn’t Nikon I suppose!).
Pentax are supposed to be giving a news conference today in Tokyo but given how leaks in this part of the world are surprisingly accuract I doubt there will be much more in the way of new news. I’ll drop a further note later on as news breaks!
May 10, 2007 @ 10:41 pm
Well their profits quadrupled on brisk camera sales. Nikkei was down 1% and Pentax down a similar amount, Canon down 1.8% and Nikon down 1.5%.
Some figures:
Consolidated profit 5.65b yen (Nikon 54.8b yen)
Imaging product segment generated 3.1b yen profit versus Loss of 1.2b yen for previous fiscal year.
DSLRs sold in fiscal 2006 increased about 2.5 fold to 300,000 units.
States it will focus on profitable businesses (novel!), targets to make 1m slr [sic] cameras a year (Nikon are hoping for 2.5m), closing a plant in Oizumi, relocating 200 workers and shutting down around 20 projects. No information on what those projects are yet though.
May 11, 2007 @ 6:59 am
akikana,
Thanks for the info.
As a one-time buyer of medical optics, it was always Olympus for the docs and Zeiss for the medical photographers. Olympus has a very high quality and very very profitable medical division.
As for concentrating on profitable business….it amuses me how often this statement appears at a time of enforced restructuring.
May 11, 2007 @ 9:13 am