Olympus to sell off camera division

[sadwitch]

For sheer units shipped numbers I can't imagine full frame being more than smaller formats. Last I remember full frame format only makes up 6-7% of overall ILC market. So if Olympus were to foolishly follow the crowd to enter full frame mirrorless market which is already dominated by Sony, it will just mean further losses. Don't think Panasonic full frame made any dent in this market and Olympus is definitely watching their progress and holding back.

I agree with Olympus saying full frame is just not for everyone and it's still expensive as a system.... So keep doing what they are good at, look at their ultra fast highly portable F1.2 AF glass range .... I don't think any system has as wide a range as Olympus and panasonic combined.

Micro 43 is niche and it's they're hitting the right notes being niche to me.

I cannot understand why so many people feel Olympus should not hang on to Micro 4/3 and move to Full Frame format

I personally feel that it is a even bigger challenge for Olympus or any other manufacturer to move into Full Frame now. After all, what technology or value proposition do they have against Sony or Canon or Nikon, who already have a huge customer base. I am not sure how successful will Panasonic Full frame be.......maybe it can appeal to its video customers.

I believed Olympus choose to stay on Micro 4/3 because even though it is a much smaller market, this is what this niche group of customers want, a more compact system with high quality interchangeable lens. It has only 1 competitor (Panasonic) and its range of Leica lenses compliments Olympus range.

No one can say for sure whether Micro 4/3 or any other format will be around in 10 years time. For me, in the event Micro 4/3 is gone one day and if Olympus venture into FF, I may switch to other brands with a more advanced body and wider range of lenses compared to Olympus trying to start from scratch in Full Frame Format.

 

[ricohflex]

As prices of big sensors drop while capability of the sensors improve, manufacturers will make less camera bodies with small sensors.
In future big sensors may become cheap and very capable.
Then manufacturers will concentrate on full frame and so-called digital medium format.

Fuji skipped full frame and frog leaped from APS-C to medium format.
What if Olympus did the same from MFT to medium format? Probably not.

Among commercially available formats, MFT and APS-C are quite close.
MFT sensor size is 225 mm². APS-C sensor size is about 370 mm². APS-C sensor is about 1.6 times the size of MFT sensor.
The old Sony A6000 body is APS-C with a small camera body, cost $495 brand new from Shopee.SG.
Let's put aside the terrible comparison with the E-M1X which is a strange outlier in terms of cost, size and weight.
The other typical Olympus MFT bodies remain bigger, heavier and cost more than the A6000. Yet the A6000 has a sensor that is 1.6x that of the MFT sensor.
Difficult to compete.

More camera companies make APS-C bodies. E.g. Sony, Leica, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Fuji.
MFT has two proponents Olympus and Panasonic. Lately Panasonic broke away to also make full frame body.
Olympus is looking lonely championing MFT. If APS-C survives, then it will wipe out MFT.

At the other end, there may be fewer models of compact cameras made for sale. Because mobile phones will have good cameras with high MP.
Samsung has 1/1.33 sensor for phone, which is 3/4 of the 1 inch sensor in some compacts e.g. Sony RX100 VII.

 

[tommyk]

Olympus Imaging division only brings in 6% of the sales of the entire Olympus corporation.
This is another chart of the fast declining sales of Olympus Mirrorless segment (-18% Y-O-Y)

This was a news article in November 2019 -

The back and forth between Olympus and the public continues, and the news is grim. After officially denying rumors of an imminent imaging business shut down, Olympus’ CEO backtracked on some previous comments today, implying that the company’s camera business may be up for sale.
Speaking with Bloomberg, Olympus CEO Yasuo Takeuchi said that the company is preparing for job cuts “in due course” in order to “improve performance” and meet its business goals. The article mostly restates what we already know from previous reports—that the company is planning to focus on the medical business—but it did contain one dynamite piece of new information:

Takeuchi also backtracked on some of his comments in the past that the camera business was not for sale, saying that may not be the case anymore.

In my opinion, the strategic options for Olympus Imaging Division have been narrowed down to :

1. Continue the loss making business and subsidizing it (which the CEO recently said they might not want to anymore, see above comments). This means Olympus can only be a niche player, which means to users, eg : 1 new camera body every 2 years. No more multiple product lines - EPL, EM10, EM5, EM1x. Maybe just 2 lines, if not just 1. Niche player also means, no more throwing marketing blitz to attract the lucrative professional shooters. In 2010-2015 when the camera market was at its peak, a niche camera manfacturer is still profitable, but in 2020, a niche camera player is usually not financially attractive at all. Usually, but not always.

2. Merge with another manufacturer (eg Panasonic ). If they can see beyond Japanese corporations, then they should really consider phone manufacturers like Huawei or Samsung. But then we know, Japanese people does not really like to work with Chinese or Koreans.

3. Sell off the division to anyone interested. (This relates to my original question I posed in July 2019)


Is the writing on the wall?

 

[sadwitch]

Only the company executives can decide their own products fate, all other opinions are just plain speculations or talking points or self serving prophecies.

Unless Olympus equipment has a built in detonator that suddenly goes kaput with the demise of the company people shouldn't be too concern and just continue to use them until it fizzes out if it did happen.

The writing on the wall to me is mirrored cameras are going.... Maybe its more exciting to rally people to ditch those DYING format with no future. Tsk

 

[ricohflex]

Customers decide whether to buy > Shareholders and investors pressure company management > CEO decides to keep or kill a line of cameras

Canon, Nikon, Leica, Panasonic-Lumix have 35mm full frame mirrorless.

A salesman only needs to show 1 graphic to the customer and no need to say anything more.
A graphic showing Full frame sensor size next to Micro 4/3 sensor size.

There is a 2nd danger to Olympus - the challenge from APS-C.
Nikon makes Z50. Leica Makes CL, Fuji makes many models and Sony has many APS-C models.
Now it is rumored that Canon is Planning to Release a Crop-Sensor EOS R in 2021.
But no more cropped lenses like EFS range. They all use RF lenses.
Presumably will over-ride the EOS M6 that uses APS-C.
This [ One Mount ] concept is existing in the Leica L mount cameras and Sony E mount cameras.

 

[tommyk]

Let's look at interchangeable camera mounts that have ended in the last 12 years and their sensor size :

Samsung NX - APSC
Olympus 4/3 - Four Thirds
Nikon CX - 1 inch
Pentax Q - 1 inch

Other than Samsung's mount which is a profitable phone maker and did not want to continue their camera business(assuming they can't get enough people to buy and existing users to switch in masses), the rest of the discontinued mount has sensors that are considered "small".

Small sensor cameras like Olympus's M4/3 could be very good, and they have a good combination of acceptable quality and portability, but small sensors are just not viable as a business based on so many recent examples above.

More so nowadays with camera phones that has taken the market positioning of acceptable quality and portability.

When consumers want acceptable quality and portability, they will reach out to their mobile phones like 99% of the time.

 

[sadwitch]

Whatever you put forth the mirrored APSC or even full frames are dying at a faster rate in my opinion with introduction of mirrorless from all companies. Mirrored Full frame still has a place in pro and enthusiast field. The rest of the mirrored cameras (nikon & canons & pentax) are facing the same fate as manual lenses vs auto focus lenses back in those days. Only the die hards or people who just refuse to adapt to EVF will peer through this tunnel vision for dear life.

 

[sadwitch]

Big doesn't always mean everything is every market. The Japanese knows the value of small and nifty and their obsession of miniaturising everything is in their tech culture.

 

[ricohflex]

It is true that before technology improved, some manufacturers were content with full frame mirror DSLR. And held back from making mirrorless, so as not to cannibalise their mirror DSLR sales. Sony changed all that with its full frame A7 mirrorless on 16 Oct 2013.

Sony, to their credit, broke through the management paralysis of traditional camera companies.

Over the next 6 years, Sony bit off big slices of the market - which terrified Canon and Nikon.
Finally about 2019 Canon and Nikon jumped in with their own full frame mirrorless. Then Panasonic. Then Leica. All of a sudden and so many at the same time.
Perhaps in 2019, there was a confluence of technology improvements and drop in full frame sensor price. Suddenly it was viable.

Do bear in mind one thing. When the team of four, namely Yoshihisa Maitani, Kunio Shimoyama, Kazuyuki Nemoto and Toshihiro Imai designed the OM1 film SLR that was released in 1972 - they designed it to use 35mm film to take 24mm x 36mm photos. That is, to deliver full frame images.
Although the team believed Small is Beautiful, they did not design a camera to use existing smaller formats such as half frame or 110 film format.

The epoch making Olympus team from the very start, believed that even though a camera was small, it should be able to handle the full 24mm x 36mm frame of image capture.

So what prevented the new generation of 2008 Olympus designers from adopting the same mental approach to build a small camera for full frame 24nmm x 36mm image capture?

In 2008 big sensors were extremely expensive and the other supporting technologies were not ready.
Maybe Olympus determined that if they did make such a full frame mirrorless camera in 2008, no one would buy it because the price will be too high.

If Olympus had not made any digital camera up till now; and its designers were tasked to design a new camera in 2020, you can be sure it will incorporate a full frame sensor. In 2020 Olympus has the engineering prowess to do that easily, if they wanted to.

But Olympus management is trapped by a fixated endearment to MFT format which was reasonable in a past era way back in 2008. But which is obsolete in 2020.

I think Olympus must go back to consider what Maitani would have done if he was a young designer in 2020.

 

[Pitachu]

Do bear in mind one thing. When the team of four, namely Yoshihisa Maitani, Kunio Shimoyama, Kazuyuki Nemoto and Toshihiro Imai designed the OM1 film SLR that was released in 1972 - they designed it to use 35mm film to take 24mm x 36mm photos. That is, to deliver full frame images.
Although the team believed Small is Beautiful, they did not design a camera to use existing smaller formats such as half frame or 110 film format.

The epoch making Olympus team from the very start, believed that even though a camera was small, it should be able to handle the full 24mm x 36mm frame of image capture.

So what prevented the new generation of 2008 Olympus designers from adopting the same mental approach to build a small camera for full frame 24nmm x 36mm image capture?

In 2008 big sensors were extremely expensive and the other supporting technologies were not ready.
Maybe Olympus determined that if they did make such a full frame mirrorless camera in 2008, no one would buy it because the price will be too high.

But Olympus management is trapped by a fixated endearment to MFT format which was reasonable in a past era way back in 2008. But which is obsolete in 2020.

It is true that Olympus started with cameras for 35mm Film.

Along the way, I believe that Olympus must have felt that it is difficult to compete with giants like Canon and Nikon and it decide to cater for a niche market, first with 4/3, them Micro 4/3. And for Olympus to have continued till now means that it did have reasonable success with the Micro 4/3 format.

With an estimated 80% drop in sales for Digital SLR across all brands in the last few years, I believe every manufacturer is struggling on how to keep Digital SLR alive. Now that Olympus mgt say that it needs its camera division to support its other more profitable provisions. Hopefully this will help Olympus to stay alive for a while.

 

[sadwitch]

The system that's going obsolete in 2020 are the APSC and Full frame mirrored cameras.

To me an Olympus line of mirrorless full frame system will mean diluting their efforts in continually developing MFT. It doesn't make sense to try to compete in this segment as choices are aplenty. Like I said, Panasonic can do it just because they are much bigger as a company compared to Olympus and it may be a costly venture to them.

Full frame are just not for everyone much like m43 are not for everyone too. Full frames bigger files also means needing more computing power to store and process and sucking up cloud storage space which user may not want.

The value proposition for Olympus is still a relatively light weight, rugged, weather sealed and fully stabilised ILC system. If people don't see this as a need and prefer to babysit their 'investments' then they will never understand why Olympus is still kicking around.

Fuji may have gone too big : medium ... very niche
Nikon have gone too small : 1" CX (Dead)
Canon have not evolved: APSC mirror (Dying) no new EFS lens.
Pentax can't make up their mind yet.

On the m43 front there's still a slew of new lens on the roadmap. Personally I think m43 can definitely coexist along full frame, medium format, large format, 1" format because it's just quite unique.

It is true that before technology improved, some manufacturers were content with full frame mirror DSLR. And held back from making mirrorless, so as not to cannibalise their mirror DSLR sales. Sony changed all that with its full frame A7 mirrorless on 16 Oct 2013.

Sony, to their credit, broke through the management paralysis of traditional camera companies.

Over the next 6 years, Sony bit off big slices of the market - which terrified Canon and Nikon.
Finally about 2019 Canon and Nikon jumped in with their own full frame mirrorless. Then Panasonic. Then Leica. All of a sudden and so many at the same time.
Perhaps in 2019, there was a confluence of technology improvements and drop in full frame sensor price. Suddenly it was viable.

Do bear in mind one thing. When the team of four, namely Yoshihisa Maitani, Kunio Shimoyama, Kazuyuki Nemoto and Toshihiro Imai designed the OM1 film SLR that was released in 1972 - they designed it to use 35mm film to take 24mm x 36mm photos. That is, to deliver full frame images.
Although the team believed Small is Beautiful, they did not design a camera to use existing smaller formats such as half frame or 110 film format.

The epoch making Olympus team from the very start, believed that even though a camera was small, it should be able to handle the full 24mm x 36mm frame of image capture.

So what prevented the new generation of 2008 Olympus designers from adopting the same mental approach to build a small camera for full frame 24nmm x 36mm image capture?

In 2008 big sensors were extremely expensive and the other supporting technologies were not ready.
Maybe Olympus determined that if they did make such a full frame mirrorless camera in 2008, no one would buy it because the price will be too high.

If Olympus had not made any digital camera up till now; and its designers were tasked to design a new camera in 2020, you can be sure it will incorporate a full frame sensor. In 2020 Olympus has the engineering prowess to do that easily, if they wanted to.

But Olympus management is trapped by a fixated endearment to MFT format which was reasonable in a past era way back in 2008. But which is obsolete in 2020.

I think Olympus must go back to consider what Maitani would have done if he was a young designer in 2020.

 

[ricohflex]

Another company has in the past few days (28 Jan 2020) announced something relevant to what is being discussed in this thread.

Philips bids farewell to home appliances to sharpen health focus

Philips <PHG.AS> will complete its transformation to a health technology business with the sale of its domestic appliances division, which no longer fits with the company's range of hospital equipment and personal health products.

www.reuters.com

It does make sense for Philips to hive off domestic appliance division that had disappointing sales growth.
To focus on hospital equipment and personal health products.
Shareholders and investors can tolerate losses of a certain business division for a while. But not forever.

Likewise, Olympus has a medical endoscopy and medical equipment division that is doing well and is the star or cash cow for the company.
But a camera imaging division that has continued to lose money and lose market share for a prolonged period. AKA the dog in the growth share matrix.
The situation is similar to what Philips was suffering.

 

[sadwitch]

What do you think would be better for users?

Only full frame or mobile phones available as a format for imaging

Or

Medium format, Full frame, compacts, smaller ILC (aka micro 43)?

 

[sadwitch]

"What is the purpose of having 40 million pixels if your means of reproduction is 2,000 across?"

Thorpe has worked for magazines, newspapers and rockstar musicians including Sir Paul McCartney since he was 17. He argues that MFT is "way above the requirements" for most web and print publications. If you're shooting with a bigger sensor, it simply takes longer to export, resize and send the files. "What they want is fewer pixels, better quality," he said. MFT is also fine for wedding photography, according to Ellis. He regularly produces images that are 20 or 30 inches across with his Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II

Do Micro Four Thirds cameras have a future?

For years, photographers and industry pundits have predicted the demise of the Micro Four Thirds (MFT) camera system. Many believe that the smaller sensor has been superseded by APS-C cameras and the ever-growing lineup of full-frame mirrorless shooters. "Not suddenly, but slowly over the course...

www.engadget.com

For everyones reading pleasure.

 

[tommyk]

Thats Thorpe, a big fan of m4/3 who has invested so heavily in m43 system and a 74 year old 's personal opinion, just like ours here

The success of M43 does not really depends on him or us but on market related factors.

I am quite sure m43 will not be around soon. The market numbers and financial returns does not lie and not based on our individual opinions.

But I like Thorpe's work, he has lots of great work and I dont think he needs to use other system after investing in m4/3.

It is the rest of the 99% who look unlikely to pay attention much to Thorpe's personal opinion or even ours.

But at least we still have the freedom to choose and disagree here.

 

[sadwitch]

Thorpe has probably worked with more systems we can imagine throughout his career and has picked his tool of choice as it worked for him presently. I personally do not think he is 'just' a fan. Of course he is just one out of many others...

Like I said too, I am pretty sure none of us will be around here over a long enough timeline to argue or prophecise the fate of a system or company

So how about we worry less and play more?

 

[Pitachu]

What do you think would be better for users?

Only full frame or mobile phones available as a format for imaging

Or

Medium format, Full frame, compacts, smaller ILC (aka micro 43)?

I use Compact (Drop & Weather resistant) for sports,
I use Micro 4/3 for Trekking, Macro and Birding,
I use Full Frame & APS for Events and Concerts
So I wish all formats remain available.

But Personally, I have my Micro 4/3 with me most of the time

 

[tommyk]

Very nice, and you are the camera companies ideal customer because you buy so many types and systems for different uses.

If the majority of camera users are like you then all the different systems will definitely survive and even thrive, and this discussion thread wont exist in the first place.

However we know in reality thats not the case because nearly all the camera manufacturers are struggling.

You belong to the privileged 1%.

The rest of us are more like the 99% because we are likely to choose just 1 or maybe 2 system.

So it leads me to conclude that Olympus camera will not survive and the m43 system will end production soon.

But this does not take away the merits of the m43 system, just like what I mentioned earlier, even good car makers like SAAB ceased production.

 

[Pitachu]

Very nice, and you are the camera companies ideal customer because you buy so many types and systems for different uses.

If the majority of camera users are like you then all the different systems will definitely survive and even thrive, and this discussion thread wont exist in the first place.

However we know in reality thats not the case because nearly all the camera manufacturers are struggling.

You belong to the privileged 1%.

The rest of us are more like the 99% because we are likely to choose just 1 or maybe 2 system.

So it leads me to conclude that Olympus camera will not survive and the m43 system will end production soon.

But this does not take away the merits of the m43 system, just like what I mentioned earlier, even good car makers like SAAB ceased production.

1. Not so many, only 3 types.
2. I cannot convince myself to bring my SLR for white water rafting, scuba diving, and mountain biking
3. Micro 4/3 is my choice bring around camera (when I am not in action sports).
4. Full Frame and APS is to show customer I am using equivalent gears as other pros. Once a customer complained that my camera is too small unlike the photographer he engaged last year. From then on, I used my Canon SLRs to shoot whenever I am paid.
5. I also agree Micro 4/3 and probably a few others will not survive for very long, but I really like what another user Sadwitch says: Worry less and play more. If Micro 4/3 is gone, I will just switch to another system. Meanwhile I will just play with what I like best
6. Looking at what Olympus and even Panasonic going to release this year for Micro 4/3 is quite exciting and good enough for me to play with for the time being
7. I am not rich. In fact, besides Olympus, and I cannot afford another any other brand (Sony, Canon etc) 600mm F4 lenses which cost more than $10,000! And the 600mm equivalent in Olympus cost less than $3000.

 

[swifty]

IMO every camera company can't rest on their laurels. It's a shrinking market and hasn't bottomed out yet and marketshare battles are far from established.

An aspect I rarely see discussed is the phenomenal rise in digital cameras in the 2000's that the current market can even decline at such a rate year after year without more casualties already. That's partly because the whole market was basically a bubble in the 2000's consisting of many casual photographers that have long moved to smartphone photography.
When it all shakes out, we're going to be left with dedicated enthusiast photographers and up and it's going to be a lot smaller pie so every manufacturer is going to need to downsize, reduce model numbers, as well as increase the interval between models.

But where does that leave Olympus and m43. My personal feelings are that the m43 user group are a dedicated bunch and those that remain clearly know the benefits of the system. Of course the million dollar question is how many of these users are there and how do you keep them continually upgrading. And to a smaller extent, I think Olympus needs to remove some of the barriers from entering the system. I personally feel there are some idiosyncrasies in their UI that prevents a user from another system from quickly picking up an Olympus camera. Which is a shame because anecdotally I see many people using m43 as an adjunct system as it does certain things really well.

So I do think Olympus have a lot of work ahead of them. Consolidation of their factory to the Vietnam one is a good start and really is necessary given the expected volume declines. Nikon have made a similar move to write down their Chinese factory as well resulting in their latest paper loss.
I think model numbers will need to decline with clear differentiation between models as well as clear branding across the entire range.

The thing is, I think the Olympus name is too prestigious to fall in Japan. It is also popular in their home market and they actually have a very low bar to shoot for: stop loosing so much money. They probably only need to roughly break even and the small imaging division will be 'tolerated' within the greater profitable group rather than raise the ire of investors.