According to a report in the Japan Times, Canon will stop developing new film-based camera products because of the shrinking analogue market and dramatically growing digital demand.
May 27, 2006: According to a report in the Japan Times, Canon will stop developing new film-based camera products because of the shrinking analogue market and dramatically growing digital demand. The report quotes the company’s president, Tsuneji Uchida, as saying: “It is difficult to develop new film-based cameras [in the current market]….. In the future, demand will be limited only to special needs, and new film-based cameras won’t be profitable. Digital cameras are better in such points as ease of printing. Scaling back the film camera (business) is a sign of the times”. A later report from Reuters news agency said Canon would continue to produce and sell existing film camera models and assess the future of the film camera business by monitoring market demand. However, Uchida has predicted that film-based cameras will soon only be the realm of enthusiasts and other select users. Currently Canon has four film-based single-lens reflex camera models and five compact cameras. Those analogue cameras, together with interchangeable lenses, accounted for only 17 percent of all Canon camera sales in fiscal 2005. Overall, Japanese camera manufacturers sold a total of 64.77 million digital cameras last year globally, compared with 5.38 million film cameras, according to Japanese industry figures.
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