[bobmaxja]

Olympus second quarter report are out

Imaging business
Sales down 17 %(6months) , operating loss of 5,7 billions yens, whemn your sales is 21 billions yens , it's for sure not a very good business
https://www.olympus-global.com/ir/data/brief/pdf/Olympus_Q2FY2020_Presentation_E.pdf
Here a key comments in there

Revenue declined due to difficult business environment in mirrorless cameras and lack of new products caused by the restructuring of production bases

Hum , seem mirrorless is not that great because of similar comments from Nikon and Canon. What a great decision by Ricoh to stay out of that jungle

[Zooland]

@Mistral75 has commented that Olympus has lost money on imaging for several years in a row, but that their overall operations make money due to the medical division. The difference lately is that a hedge fund has purchased a good percentage of the company and could be less amenable to accepting ongoing losses from that portion of the company.

But who really knows except Olympus' board? The reality is that Samsung was going full bore at making MILCs until suddenly they weren't and as far as I can recall, they never made an official announcement that they were stopping selling cameras.

This hedge fund could be why there’s this increased anxiety, as I now know that Sony has recently sold its last stake in Olympus after pressure from their own hedge fund.

[RobA_Oz]

This hedge fund could be why there’s this increased anxiety, as I now know that Sony has recently sold its last stake in Olympus after pressure from their own hedge fund.

Everything is for sale at the right price. If Ricoh were to pick up Olympus’ camera division at a fire sale price, there could be interesting synergies, especially with Ricoh-branded cameras.

All industries are different, but I note with interest that Peugeot-Citroën picked up GM’s failing European operation and turned it around, a while ago. Part of that, as I understand it, was improving purchasing costs through increased scale, and part on reorganisation. Picking up Olympus and providing it with additional manufacturing scale as well as broadening Ricoh’s optical design capacity might be a worthwhile exercise, but only at the right price and with the right management team and strategy.

[surfar]

Won't happen,Ricohs budget for photo things is minimal and why would any Japanese company buy a consistent loss maker?

A ca$hed up Chinese company may take the risk.

[Fenwoodian]

.
I prefer Panasonic Lumix over Olympus for my M4/3rds cameras. Panasonic M4/3rds cameras (and lenses) are excellent; and Pany does video better than Oly (a big reason many of us who use M4/3rds prefer Pany bodies over Oly bodies).

Overall, I understand M4/3rds sales are down. I think part of it is because M4/3rds companies have not made significant improvements in their sensors in years. Maybe with shrinking overall sales, and no new wiz-bang sensors coming out, the smaller M4/3 market can only support one M4/3 company?

[RobA_Oz]

Won't happen,Ricohs budget for photo things is minimal and why would any Japanese company buy a consistent loss maker?

A ca$hed up Chinese company may take the risk.

I wouldn’t bet money on it, either, but it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. If the opportunity was there to expand a part of their business, and a good case could be made for an acquisition, their directors would be negligent for not considering it.

However, I imagine the biggest hurdle would be devising a strategy for securing the future for MFT systems. That’s far from certain, as multi-camera phones continue to get better, and larger-sensor MILCs get cheaper, while MFT bodies and lenses get bigger.

I recently bought an Olympus OM-D EM5II, on run-out prior to the release of the EM5III, just to get a decent feel for a light-weight system with an EVF. It’s impressive for what it is, and capable of producing some good images, but so far it isn’t nearly good enough to match my K-3, or even my older K-5 in many respects, but it’s early days yet.

[Mistral75]

At the end of the day, with the exception of those in Olympus (expecially their camera devision), nobody really knows whats going on with them. They can stay around for another 10+ years or like Samsung did suddenly announce tomorrow "Hey, we're leaving the camera business! Peace! ✌"

Samsung never announced they would leave the camera business; There were rumours, counter-rumours and they progressively fade away from the landscape.

[Mistral75]

(...) I expect we will see the Pen line updated soon as well. (...)

The Pen line has been updated as well, so to speak, the Pen E-PL10 recently replacing the Pen E-PL9 in Asia and soon in Europe and the US.

The funny thing is that the E-PL10 is so close to the E-PL9 that it didn't need to be registered: it uses the same certification as the E-PL9 (model number: IM008).

[Winder]

.
I prefer Panasonic Lumix over Olympus for my M4/3rds cameras. Panasonic M4/3rds cameras (and lenses) are excellent; and Pany does video better than Oly (a big reason many of us who use M4/3rds prefer Pany bodies over Oly bodies).

Overall, I understand M4/3rds sales are down. I think part of it is because M4/3rds companies have not made significant improvements in their sensors in years. Maybe with shrinking overall sales, and no new wiz-bang sensors coming out, the smaller M4/3 market can only support one M4/3 company?

Neither Panasonic or Olympus is going to leave the marker or m4/3. The GH-5 line has done very well for Panasonic and Olympus has done very well with the PEN and EM-5 lines. I expect that we will see Olympus use a M4/3 sensor from Sony that is a current generation in the near future. I'm pretty sure Panasonic is using Tower Jazz sensors in the S series. Panasonic still needs to improve the AF of their cameras. There CDAF takes a good bit more processing power than the on sensor PDAF and Panasonic needs to catch-up. Other than AF however, Panasonic is as good or better than anyone else in the market.

[Leumas]

Olympus isn't going anywhere. MFT will be with us forever. It will always be inherently more portable due to the physics of sensor size. MFT is the best compromise of size and image quality.

And honestly, as technology progresses there will be even less of a need for Full Frame for many photographers. Olympus is very innovative as well, right up there with Pentax, they will continue to implement more forward tech than their competitors FF's. I just got a portable Lumix Gx85 kit and I love it!

Doomsayers are just looking for clicks, and it worked honestly.

[Mistral75]

(...) Olympus is very innovative as well, right up there with Pentax, they will continue to implement more forward tech than their competitors FF's. I just got a portable Lumix Gx85 kit and I love it!

(...)

...which happens to be a Panasonic camera, not an Olympus one...

[fiveseven]

Olympus second quarter report are out

Imaging business
Sales down 17 %(6months) , operating loss of 5,7 billions yens, whemn your sales is 21 billions yens , it's for sure not a very good business
https://www.olympus-global.com/ir/data/brief/pdf/Olympus_Q2FY2020_Presentation_E.pdf
Here a key comments in there


Hum , seem mirrorless is not that great because of similar comments from Nikon and Canon. What a great decision by Ricoh to stay out of that jungle

Not really.... the reason has nothing to do with mirrorless or dslr. It has everything to do with Sony's FF camera (A7) used market and Fujifilm x series.
Olympus sales are down because they are priced in that same range but with a smaller sensor.
Most don't like smaller sensor, especially hobbyists who like pro equipment. That is just how people are for the most part.
I own one Olympus mirrorless and four of their DSLR's. I like Olympus but I also like and own other brands. If Pentax made a FF mirrorless I'd be in line to get one and I own 20 something camera's.
I mainly shoot with manual glass and I'd take mirrorless over dslr any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

[Leumas]

...which happens to be a Panasonic camera, not an Olympus one...

Lol yes.I mentioned it cause of MFT

[tokyoscape]

Not really.... the reason has nothing to do with mirrorless or dslr.

Totally agree on that. The problem is not the over all popularity of mirror-less market, but it is the smaller sensor size Olympus selects to go with then the over all size of its camera and price make it harder for people to justify buying one when they have Fuji APSC and SONY full frame to compare with.
On their business plan before the rumor, they plan to downsize their IT sector and spend more to improve the medical part of their business, saying absolutely nothing about closeing its camera division. This is like rumor on Pentax in the pass year.

[mlt]

I know a couple of photographers that like the Olympus size and features, particularly with the 12-200 zoom ( 24-400 range on ff ) when they don’t want to or can’t cary their normal DSLRs.