Olympus recently released the financial results of last year during which it had declared to decrease emphasis on compact cameras and devote more attention to the compact system cameras. According to these results, the sales of Imaging Group of the company went down by 16 percent, while decrease in overall profit was also seen during the last quarter. Talking specifically about the compact system cameras from the company, Olympus has claimed that the compact system camera unit volume went up by 11 percent, while net sales increased by 50 percent, which is quite significant.
Olympus has said that the result of the quarter have surged up from historical bottom. However, detailed year-to-year and quarter-to-quarter pattern indicating such a trend is missing. Graphs can be quite misleading if they are not read in conjunction with adjacent quarters and years. For example, the graphs that have been released show that the second quarter of this year, which spans from July to September, is forecast as being slightly lower than the second quarter of the last year, while having the same level of loss. This mean that ‘improving steadily’ is not really the right kind of description for such a trend.
According to the report by Olympus, the Imaging department of the company has undergone loss for four quarters now, with expected loss of another quarter ahead. However, forecast for a small profit for full year, including the overall increased sales, is also made. This time, Olympus also included digital cameras inventories whose sales went up 1.4 billion yen in one month. This enormous increase in sales does seem to be a enough reason to include the result in the report. However, the company has reported its lowest overall market share of just 6 percent which clearly signifies that Olympus’s share is declining at an abrupt pace. Olympus, however, seems to be doing good in the domain of compact system cameras and if the present progress level if maintained, future can be quite good on this front.
Olympus has also forecasted same net sales for Imaging department in the coming year which does seem to be quite reasonable. However, the really important claim is that the company has claimed to increase the sales of mirrorless cameras by 180 percent by 2017. With the present pace of 11 percent year-to-year gain, the company would certainly need to exert a lot more pressure on this front. The target can become tougher with Canon also entering the market of mirrorless cameras. Canon can turn out to be a big player and the competition would significantly increase with other tech giants also have their own plans of capturing the market. For Olympus fans, it is a refreshing bit of information that Olympus intends on pushing its Imaging group rather than shutting it down in face of the immense pressure. It would be good to see Olympus retaining its place in the market of mirrorless cameras since the quality of compact system cameras and lenses from Olympus is very good so far.
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