The century-old camera giant suddenly announced: ending Japanese production, it was a crossover player who challenged him!

According to Kyodo News, Japanese camera giant Nikon will end domestic production of digital SLR camera bodies within this year. As part of the structural reform, Nikon will transfer the production of the only domestic factory in Miyagi Prefecture that produces camera bodies to the main factory in Thailand. At present, only Canon, Sony, Nikon and other brands remain in the camera market.

Nikon produced cameras in 1948, leading the development of the industry together with Canon. Smart phones are equipped with multiple cameras to take high-quality photos, and people no longer need to carry cameras with them, which makes the camera market into a downturn. Nikon also plans to close two factories in Yamagata and Fukushima prefectures that are engaged in the processing of replacement lens parts for digital cameras. At present, the Sendai Nikon factory of Japan’s affiliated company only produces the top model D6 for professionals.
Previously, Nikon had three camera production bases located in Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, Thailand, and China. However, with the popularity of smartphones, camera sales have been severely impacted. Nikon’s production base in Wuxi, Jiangsu has been closed in 2017. Now, after the shutdown of the camera production base in Sendai City, all Nikon camera production lines will be transferred to Thailand .

Nikon was founded in 1917. As a “century-year-old company”, Nikon has always been a representative company of “Made in Japan” and has been high hopes since its inception. Relying on its own technical experience in the optical field, from the beginning of imitating the German brand, it gradually moved towards completely self-developed and self-made, and even grew into a world-class camera giant through a series of innovations, and jointly monopolized the global high-end camera market with Canon and Zeiss. Nikon is one of the representative companies of precision and optical technology. Its business areas include four major business areas: healthcare, precision equipment, imaging products, and industrial metrology. In recent years, as the performance of smart phone cameras has improved, the digital camera market has shrunk significantly. According to the Japanese Camera and Imaging Machinery Industry Association, the output of cameras in 2020 is about 8.74 million units, which is about a quarter of that in 2015. According to the Nikkei News, Nikon accounts for nearly 30% of the Chinese camera market, but the entire camera market is shrinking. Under the influence of changes in the external market, the demand for small digital cameras in particular is declining. As mobile phone camera functions become more and more powerful, the demand for digital cameras continues to shrink, and its sales continue to decline after reaching its peak in 2010. CIPA data shows that in 2010, the sales volume of digital cameras exceeded 121 million units, and by 2020, the annual sales volume will only be 8.88 million units, which is not only a 41.6% decrease from the same period last year, but also a 92.7% decrease from 2010 sales, which is less than 1/10 of the peak. . In the update iteration of mobile phones, mobile phone cameras have become better than before. Nowadays, people can take 100 million pixel photos, their sharpness and image quality are very high. Not only that, the camera software can also automatically generate HDR images, and has portrait and night modes, which can mimic the effects of professional cameras. The camera industry is getting sluggish day by day, but many camera manufacturers choose to rise to the challenge and enter the mobile phone market directly. For example, Kodak produced its own camera phone in 2016. Leica, a German camera brand with a history of more than 120 years, chose to partner with Huawei as early as 2016. It is not difficult to see that the old brands in the camera industry are also changing their previous product models. In the future, the conventional size of smartphones may change to accommodate larger sensors, and they may even install different lenses. Today, with the rapid development of technology, mobile phone photography has become very convenient, and mobile phone pixels have been officially promoted from the “10 million” level to the “100 million” level, which is comparable to professional cameras. Today, the space left for digital cameras is getting smaller and smaller. It is often not your peers who defeat you, but the crossover! Crazy Mechanical Control, a communication base for in-depth mechanical enthusiasts, for more exciting content, please pay attention to our WeChat public account name: Crazy Mechanical Control (WeChat ID: fkjxk007)