If mirrorless is eroding the DSLR market share, camera-phones are eroding the compact camera market. So it comes with no surprise that Olympus will buy the ITX phone corporation:

“TOKYO (Nikkei)–Olympus Corp. (7733) said Friday that it will launch a tender offer for ITX Corp. (2725) to turn the cellular phone sales unit into a wholly owned subsidiary. Olympus currently holds an 82.07% stake in ITX. The cost of acquiring the ITX shares that it does not own will likely come to about 7 billion yen. The tender offer will begin Thursday and end Dec. 27. The offering price is set at 60,500 yen a share, which translates to a roughly 34% premium over ITX stock’s closing price on Friday.”

Just a speculation: Would you like if future PEN cameras would be able to connect (via mobile Internet) to your social network to instantly share pictures? I know Sony and Samsung are working on that and thisould be another reason why Olympus is acquiring the ITX shares.

P.S.: The Panasonic LUMIX Phone will be available next February in Japan (Akihabaranews)

Our friend and 43rumors reader Thom Hogan just published his 2011 predictions. I copied the part related to Olympus and Panasonic. Please click here to read the full article at bythom.com.

• Olympus. We should get three m4/3 bodies from Olympus in 2011, but we’ll probably get two: E-P3 and E-PL2. The latter will be the incremental improvement to the [shoplink 14832]E-PL1[/shoplink] and attempt to try to keep them in the game at the low end of the mirrorless realm. Basically, that means a US$499 camera or less with lens at retail, which means that the main development drive is in engineering out costs, not making a better product. At the other end, Olympus needs a solid-as-a-brick, pro m4/3 body, and I’m guessing that Olympus will make that the E-P3 and keep the [shoplink 14830]E-P2[/shoplink] in the lineup as the middle. There’s a possibility I’m wrong, and that they’ll update the E-P2 to the E-P3 and add a higher end, more pro model, but that seems like a lot of work for Oly in a short time. True, the 4/3 DSLR engineering teams aren’t doing anything any more, so that argues for the three-body introduction scenario. Okay, so I’ll take what I wrote back and say E-PL2, E-P3, and E-P5 will appear. Like Panasonic (see below), we’ll have the lower models continuing the current sensors (with modest updates) and the upper models upping the megapixel numbers. We already know that we’re getting a super telephoto zoom (~70-300mm variable aperture, or is it the 90-250mm f/2.8 in m4/3 garb? I want the latter, but it’ll probably be the former), a 50mm macro, an 8mm fisheye, and a 12mm wide angle lens in early 2011. I think we’ll only get one additional lens delivered in 2011, and that would be a pro-caliber mid-range zoom (14-45mm f/2.8?) with the high end body. But by the end of the year I suspect that we’ll have a new lens roadmap that shows us a couple more high specification m4/3 lenses (fixed aperture zooms), another prime (likely 25mm), and another consumer zoom of some sort.
• Panasonic. The [shoplink 16254]GH2[/shoplink] got launched late in the year, so the high end for Panasonic seems set for 2011. Meanwhile the G2 isn’t out of date, either. Thus, it’s the GF1 type camera that’s where the action will be. We’ll actually get two variants: a lower level replacement for the [shoplink 14828]GF1[/shoplink] (call it the GF-2 [actually announced a week after I wrote that line]) and a higher level supplement (call it the GP-2). The lower end continues the current 12mp sensors (updated slightly), the upper end gets the GH2 sensor. Lenses are tougher to figure. But I suspect that, like Olympus, by going upscale with a model Panasonic needs to do the same with lenses, so we’ll get something like a 14-45mm f/2.8 and a 45-100mm f/2.8 pairing, maybe in Leica garb. What we really need is a 10mm or 12mm prime, though. Panasonic seems to be hot on the wides, so I’m going to bet that we get something like that in the lineup announced in 2011, too. We already have good word that we’ll see a 25mm f/1.4 in the coming year from them. Panasonic is making decent cameras, but they need to get their marketing and sales up to a higher level. And all the “G’s” and “2’s” in their naming (GH-2, G2, G20, GF-2) aren’t helping. Talk about confusing the potential buyer.

So what do you think? Feel free to comment this post. Thom is reading us!

P.S.: The first camera to be replaced is the E-P2 (which is currently in Stock with lens and EVF for $799 only….).