Nikon shutters China plant, lays off 2,285 employees, Blames Rise of Smartphones

[dolina]

Japan's Nikon shutters China plant, lays off 2,285 employees, Blames Rise of Smartphones

Press Release: http://www.nikon.com/news/2017/1030_01_e.pdf

[ricktas]

I am not sure about the smartphone reasoning.

Go back a few years and people had more ready cash to splash on a new model DSLR. People used to upgrade every year or two..cause they could afford to.

Along came the GFC and people tightened their belts. So around the same time we say the rise of the 50 month interest free credit card deals that Harvey Norman etc started. People went wow and got themselves a new camera, or TV etc.. and then realised 50 months is a long time, and have been paying off these interest free credit cards. Then post GFC we see most people still do not have the spare cash to upgrade their DSLR as regularly as they used to.

Smartphones may be partially a cause, but a tighter budgeting and current debt levels are stopping a lot of people.

Perhaps Nikon etc, need to start offering deals on DSLR's to get people interested again?

[Steve Axford]

I think Nikon are probably right about the smartphones and Nikon are probably doing the right thing in downsizing quickly. It is hard to see camera sales recovering to anything like their peak in 2010. Offering deals isn't going to help either if it cuts into profits. I think we can expect to see top end cameras increase in price as volumes decrease. Sad, but prices will rise as fewer cashed up people want to spend large amounts on cameras (why bother when a smart phone will do the job). Even the very rich and stupid will stop doing it as it goes out of fashion. Times are changing.

[arthurking83]

I think Nikon are probably right about the smartphones and Nikon are probably doing the right thing in downsizing quickly. It is hard to see camera sales recovering to anything like their peak in 2010. Offering deals isn't going to help either if it cuts into profits. I think we can expect to see top end cameras increase in price as volumes decrease. Sad, but prices will rise as fewer cashed up people want to spend large amounts on cameras (why bother when a smart phone will do the job). Even the very rich and stupid will stop doing it as it goes out of fashion. Times are changing.

The Chinese plant in question is one that manufactures compacts.
Compact camera sales has crashed massively, as already said, due to people converting to smartphones for snap type situations.

The new compact market is going to be based on higher end(ie. predominantly) larger sensor compacts .. or tough type compacts that smartphones couldn't be used for(underwater, extreme sports type situations .. etc).

The market is still healthy for high end compacts tho, and my theory is that what will almost certainly happen is that to keep price increases to a minimum more of these high end compacts will share more components than before, and updated specs and features will be fewer and further between.

[Steve Axford]

The companies that guess well and do things efficiently will survive. It will be interesting times.