Originally posted by luftfluss Lame clickbait. Won't do it.
Approximately 300 words of content, with a third of that being cut and pasted content from other sources. Plus a photoshopped Ricoh corporate logo that probably took 15 minutes to finish
Originally posted by AfterPentax Mark II In this thread the CEO states that the company is thinking about what to do with the camera division. They are willing to work together (joint venture?) but are hesitant about the future of the brand...
Some context:
Yoshinori Yamashita took over as CEO of Ricoh Company in 2017 and systematically re-imagined Ricoh as a digital documents corporation. The photocopier business has been in a steady state of decline for over a decade and the new vision was to replace Ricoh's dependence on its core business with products and services that had potential for growth as well as being profitable. This turned out to be a very good move, with COVID giving a fatal wound to the centralized office tower model of industrial society, Ricoh is stronger now than when Yamashita took over. The non-industrial photography business was less than 5% of Ricoh Company when Yamashita took over, it is now no more than 1%.
The background of the current president of Ricoh Imaging, Noboru Akabane, speaks to the future of the Pentax and Ricoh brands. Akabane has a banking background and was president of Ricoh Imaging from 2013 to 2016, essentially managing Pentax after Ricoh purchased it from Hoya. Akabane then moved up to the parent company to be deputy director of the Planning Department, responsible for "institutional reform" of Ricoh Company, implementing Yamashita's vision. In November, 2021, Akabane was reappointed as president of Ricoh Imaging, apparently at his request.
Ricoh Imaging is a vanity division of Ricoh Company, kept for the goodwill attached to the Pentax and Ricoh brands, as long it doesn't cost too much money to support. For the CEO of Ricoh Company to mention the Pentax and GR brands in an investor meeting is quite unusual. When Yamashita
Quote: expressed his (or Ricoh's) willingness to make PENTAX and GR continue for future as a valuable business. He said that they "will start searching for a way" to do it, that in doing so they hope they can work with outside partner(s). Later, when asked about accepting outside investment VS selling camera business, he said that they're willing to work with partners if necessary and are willing to invest, OTOH they won't be able to "fulfill responsibilities" (to make the brands continue) if they just sell the brands and therefore they need to think long and hard.
in March of 2021, this was a signal to other players in the photographic equipment industry that Pentax and GR could become part of a larger grouping (either by selling off Ricoh Imaging or Ricoh Imaging acquiring other product lines), but Ricoh Imaging was not subject to the overall corporate strategy.
Eight months later, Akabane is back as president of Ricoh Imaging. Reading between the lines, as long as Ricoh Imaging can sustain itself, new Pentax and GR products will continue to be available for purchase. On the other hand, the parent company is not going to make substantial capital investments in a tiny division with no realistic prospects for growth. The market for cameras and lenses seems to have bottomed out, but Nikon is the only player in this industry that relies on its photographic equipment business for its overall financial health. Who knows what will happen when the buyers of new MILCs decide they don't need to buy any more cameras and lenses? Change will continue to come to this industry and the mass market industrial model won't apply anymore.