where there’s smoke there’s fire

Here is a follow-up on the “Maybe Nikon won’t leave the market?” post from 2021 by RC Jenkins:

It’s time. 2 years ago, I blew the entire industry away by confidently and decisively declaring: “Maybe Nikon won’t exit the camera market?” 🤷🏽‍♂️

Maybe Nikon won’t exit the camera market?

Clueless Youtubers looked puzzled as they requested “don’t forget to please like and subscribe?” Commenters scrambled to find the correct mind-blown gif. And everyone who worried about market share and thought Nikon was going to go bankrupt…continued to think that.

Well, well, well. How the tables have turned to Techno (…Systems Research) and to the melodic beatboxing of a custom Z9 shutter sound.

So here we are. And where’s that exactly? Let’s briefly catch up with some highlights since:

• Nikon launched the Z9 (and for only $5500), which had the highest first-year sales volumes of any flagship camera in 15 years. As Eamon Hickey pointed out, this is probably only among Nikon flagships, so since the D3 (Nikon’s first full-frame DSLR).
• Nikon got sued by Red for offering internal, Bayer-compressed raw video. Predictably, Red dropped the lawsuit and raw video stayed in Nikon’s cameras. At minimum, Nikon is currently ahead in offering internal raw video–even if competitors develop and offer this, there is a risk that Red will sue them. So they’ll have to hire expensive lawyers to copy-paste Nikon’s response, which Nikon’s expensive lawyers probably copy-pasted from Jinni Tech
• Nikon launched the Z8–essentially a de-gripped Z9–for only $4000. This is similar in price to the Canon R5, Sony A7RV, and Sony A9. And it’s also similar in specs to the Sony A1, which costs a full $2500 more.
• 80% of Nikon’s revenues now come from mirrorless cameras, similar to industry (CIPA). This is much higher than the ~20% Nikon estimated last time.
• Nikon Imaging just announced a record-high operating margin, at 18.6% of revenue. Nikons operating margin went from – ¥ 35.7B (FY2021) to + ¥ 42.2B (FY2023), an increase of ¥ 77.9B ($579M).
• Industry (CIPA) total ILC units have been steady, at ~5-6 Million units
• Nikon total ILC have been steady, at ~600-700K units
• Nikon Imaging’s sustained goal for the next few years is ¥ 200B, at ¥22B operating margin (at 10% of revenue)

Huh? Simple: from a business perspective, Nikon Imaging is healthy. As I said last time, unit market share isn’t everything: Nikon’s at ~12% for ILCs. But in Nikon’s case, operating profit is positive, in the hundreds of millions of dollars. They are making money. And money buys things–unit market share % does not.

Speaking of the market, let’s take a look at the latest CIPA numbers too:

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