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



## dolina (Oct 31, 2017)

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


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## 9VIII (Oct 31, 2017)

I wonder what products were specifically not selling that were being made at NIC?


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## dolina (Oct 31, 2017)

9VIII said:


> I wonder what products were specifically not selling that were being made at NIC?


Per press release they point to their point & shoot as being most impacted.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Oct 31, 2017)

Nikon needs to stem the bleeding of funds and concentrate on selling profitable items. They aggressively started a large number of widely spread camera projects at just the wrong time, and brought the wrong products to the market. While the D850 is going to be a popular product among enthusiasts, they need a serious set of Mirrorless cameras and they need to be products that will sell by the millions. Apparently, they have facilities in Thailand or Japan that can handle that.

Canon is also pulling production back to Japan, and pursuing industrial and medical products, so they have been quietly regrouping due to lost P&S sales. There may be more camera makers who fall by the wayside or merge into the stronger ones. 

Look for a Chinese company to take over the plant, Nikon may be requiring that it not be sold to a competitor? DJI might want to jump into the photography business, and having access to a trained, skilled workforce would be a big factor.

I expect that Canon, Nikon, and Sony would worry about that.


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## 9VIII (Oct 31, 2017)

Looking at the sales numbers over the last decade from the other thread (http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=33625.0), I really have to wonder what all the camera companies were thinking in 2012.

I’m reminded of some business advice from a factory owner: “Always expand slowly”
Fast expansion is one of the most common reasons for a business to fail.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Oct 31, 2017)

9VIII said:


> Looking at the sales numbers over the last decade from the other thread (http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=33625.0), I really have to wonder what all the camera companies were thinking in 2012.
> 
> I’m reminded of some business advice from a factory owner: “Always expand slowly”
> Fast expansion is one of the most common reasons for a business to fail.



And so is being slow to react to new market demands that you are suddenly irrelevant. Sometimes you just make the wrong move with a superior product like creating Betamax tapes too short to record a entire movie. Marketing failure to judge the buyer.

Nikon put a lot of resources into their 1 in sensor mirrorless at a time when buyers felt that they wanted a big professional looking DSLRs and felt that small cameras could be replaced with their cell phones.


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## dolina (Oct 31, 2017)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> 9VIII said:
> 
> 
> > Looking at the sales numbers over the last decade from the other thread (http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=33625.0), I really have to wonder what all the camera companies were thinking in 2012.
> ...


It is better you obsolete your own product than someone else doing it for you.

It would have been interesting to see camera makers putting a more serious and earlier effort into joining the smartphone market.

They could have all ran on a stock version of Android with 1-inch image sensors.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Oct 31, 2017)

dolina said:


> Mt Spokane Photography said:
> 
> 
> > 9VIII said:
> ...



The smart phone market is too cutthroat, and a entirely different business. Canon and Nikon had no choice but to stay out of it. Their best bet would have been to buy Apple stock, and let someone else do the hard work  

Sony got into the market, and is getting hammered. Motorola was a early big player along with Nokia, Nokia is scrambling to stay in business, and Motorola has moved down the list, but being a huge company, is still churning out Smartphones. Blackberry is fighting to stay alive.


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## neuroanatomist (Oct 31, 2017)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Blackberry is fighting to stay alive.



I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago, and I did a double-take when someone next to me pulled out a BB. It's been a couple of years since I've seen one 'in the wild'.


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## Don Haines (Oct 31, 2017)

Don’t forget the impact of robotics..... Labour might cost more in Japan, but robots work for free and for 24 hours per day.....


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Nov 1, 2017)

Don Haines said:


> Don’t forget the impact of robotics..... Labour might cost more in Japan, but robots work for free and for 24 hours per day.....



I wish that were true. However, there are people who operate them, maintain them, program them, build them, design them, and they all want wages which must be factored into the cost of a Robot. Then their is the cost of designing a part or product so it can be made by a Robot.

The thing about Robots is if everything goes right, they assemble products identically, with little variation, and the cost per unit is less. That includes not only assembly costs, but fewer failures due to improper assembly.

On the other hand, they are not smart enough to detect a programming error, and if a part or product is mis-assembled / machined, they can make a lot of scrap very quickly. So a person needs to ride herd on them to provide common sense and spot obvious issues that a Robot can't spot. They continue to get better and better, and sometimes limited tests can be done to raise a flag if the part does not function. This requires a 2nd person or group writing test programs so that tests are not run based on the original erroneous instructions.

Obviously, even with all this, they can save a lot of money, but they don't work for free.


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