Nikon issued Q&A for their latest Imaging Products Business financial results:
Q: Can you tell us about the impact of the “2016 Kumamoto earthquakes” on your business performance?
A: The earthquakes have affected suppliers of parts for a wide range of our products, including digital cameras–interchangeable lens type, interchangeable lenses and compact digital cameras. We anticipate that this will impact our sales and production. We have factored that impact into our latest business performance forecast based on information currently available to us. As such, please understand that said forecast constitutes “target figures” at this point in time, and contains considerable uncertainty.
Currently, in addition to gathering information together with multiple suppliers based in earthquake-stricken areas, we are taking whatever steps are in our power to address the situation. However, we anticipate that production at our parts suppliers overall will not be fully restored until around July. For the months of April through July, we will handle production primarily with the use of parts inventory. From August and September onwards, we plan on starting up production with priority placed on middle and high-end class digital SLR cameras and interchangeable lenses, and endeavor to recover our share of the market with a full production during the second half of the year ending March 2017.
Q: Can you tell us about your digital camera unit sales forecast for the year ending March 2017?
A: The latest forecast that we have announced constitutes our “target figures” for units sold of digital cameras at this point in time, which takes into account the contractionary trend of the market overall, the impact of the Kumamoto earthquakes and the delay in the release of our new compact digital cameras that we recently announced.
Based on the above conditions, we have forecasted 3.2 million unit sales of the digital cameras–interchangeable lens type, a year-on-year decrease of 21%; 4.9 million unit sales of interchangeable lenses, a year-on-year decrease of 17%; and 3.7 million unit sales of compact digital cameras, a year-on-year decrease of 41%.
Nikon has already started massive cost cutting measures all over the world.