... just to look at it from business perspective.
When we read what their own forecasts say about the new business year then the customer and money exodus will continue if not gain speed.
Nikon's own predition is that they'll loose more market share in all areas and at the same time the absolute market size will continue to shrink as well.
Profit per ILC product (both cameras and lenses) sold will drop from 4207 yen to 2857 yen (-32%). That is $26 operating profit per camera or lens.
I hope nobody remains wondering why Nikon has all these quality issues. What do you think, how many hours you can spend on quality inspecting an item when your profits are $26 for the whole thingy?
The worst three parts are:
a) in the past Nikon's forecasts had a very strong tendency to be
overoptimistic, so reality is likely to be worse than what is shown
b) the chart strongly suggests that after a little more than
one more year of decline at recent speeds, their whole imaging business could become a
loss-maker. And that is a 6 year trend now.
c) nothing in the report mentions the need to give
massive discounts on underwhelming products briefly after market introduction. In Germany the Z7 fell from 3700 EUR to 2700 EUR (-27%) in less than 5 months. No way that is not eating a lot of profitability. It took the D7200 3.5 years for such a devaluation.
I mean, who would invest thousands of dollars into a system and mount with this poor outlook? Nikon 1 anyone? Olympus mFT anyone? Sony A-Mount anyone?
Stagnancy is a lot better by comparison than free fall.
The Ricoh guys seem to be much better at that game from business perspective. Let's hope they never start doing what Nikon has done. Be different.