Olympus president Hiroyuki Sasa says they will focus on premium mirrorless market.
Bloomberg and Toyo Keizai interviewed Olympus Ceo Hiroyuki Sasa.
– Mirrorless market will growth particularly in the premium segment.
– Also Europe and North America mirrorless market is expected to grow. And OMD models did well.
– Olympus was mainly a compact camera producer and Olympus is now shifting to mirrorless system cameras. Low price models have been reduced
– Olympus expected a break-even last year but PEN sales were lower than expected. And Olympus also had delay in shipments (example for the E-M10).
– The camera unit will probably have operating profit of 5 billion yen in the 12 months starting April 2015, after a loss of 3.5 billion yen expected in the current fiscal year.
– Olympus targets to sell 630,000 units of mirrorless cameras this year, 24 percent higher than the previous 12-month period. Sales of compact cameras are expected to plunge to 1 million units this year from 2.71 million units a year earlier
– Olympus plans to focus their camera business also on new markets like vehicle cameras and of course medical business
– Olympus will never stop the digital camera business because it also influences technology development in other business (like the medical).
In short: More premium cameras to come and break even expected for the current fiscal year. Looks good if they can really achieve the goals!
