Future of Nikon

WestEndFoto

The latest news about Nikon's restructuring is a bit of a surprise, though perhaps not so much if you have been following Thom's comments.

Here is Thom's latest article:

http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/nikons-first-half-financial.html

The dotted line showing the decline in "Non-ILC" cameras is pretty steep for both Canon and Nikon. We may be watching the terminal decline of this sector.

With all the layoffs, it would be interesting to see who is being layed off where and who is being reassigned where.

So what does this mean for the future of Nikon?

NSXTypeR

Who knows? Nikon is notoriously silent about their products and direction.

Hopefully they'll change for the better, but at this rate they may go bust before anything good comes out to turn the ship around.

PB_PM

If you have been watching Nikon the last few years the answer is clear, partiularly if you watch what lenses are being released. Basically, more high end products, with higher price tags. Release the same low end stuff over and over again with small tweaks to suck people in. Focus on attracting the high end buyers, slowly but surely jack up the prices and hope the upper middle class and the rich keep buying the latest and greatest. Must be working, because even though sales are down, profits are up.

framer

IMHO Nikon is great at not leaving money on the table. They know the low end is dead, the only question is how to shrink it and make money. If they use their talents and get into new areas they survive but cheap camera sales are history.

The future is workflow issues in new models, wasted labor cost more than any camera. That is a key to getting high prices from working photographers IMHO.

framer

WestEndFoto

I sense a little class warfare in this thread.

retread

I don't have enough class to fight over.

PB_PM

WestEndFoto said:

I sense a little class warfare in this thread.

As the old saying goes, "if the shoe fits, wear it." When I started getting into digital SLR's 8 years ago, you could get a D300 for $1899, the D500 is nearly $3000. The D700 was $2799, the D810 is now $3999. The D3 was $4999, the D5 is now $6999. The 24-70mm F2.8G was $1499, new model? $2999. The 70-200mm F2.8G VR was $1999, the new E model is $2999. *All prices in Cdn dollars, from time of release, past and present.

That's a big increase, even if you consider inflation and dollar value changes over the last 8 years. If the prices alone aren't enough to convince you of this, I don't know what is.

Ironheart

Luxury goods usually far outpace ordinary inflation which is indexed off commodities. Cameras and cars are a good comparison since we have a range of products from consumer to professional, and technological advances, coupled with consumerism. Also multiple factors from cost of goods, labor, and service, coupled with inflation, currency, and regulatory and compliance costs, it's not like selling a quart of milk

2008 AMG S65 - $184,000
2017 AMG S65 - $226,900

24% increase

2008 BMW 750i - $71,195
2017 BMW 750i - $94,600

That's a 32% increase, well above inflation.

These are not even the highest end cars, this is like D5xxx and D7xxx of the automotive world. I'm not going to bother puling prices for Rolls-Royce, Bentley and the like, which would be more like the D8xx and D5xx, and high-end 2.8 zooms.

In the D3 to D5 comparison, that's a 40% increase for arguably the highest end professional tool in its class in the world. Throw the super-tele primes in the mix and the comparison in the automotive would would be an F1 race car. They have gone up over 10-fold (1000%) in the last 8 years. Makes the high-end pro camera gear look like a bargain...

Edit: okay maybe the F1 comparison in the hundreds of millions range is overblown, but consider the Lamborghini Sesto Elemento at north of $2,000,000 and the Ferrari LaFerrari starting at $1,500,000 as production cars and the fact that they represent significant increases over previous iterations.

PB_PM

I'd hardly call most of Nikon's cameras luxury goods. A Hasselblad or Phase One MF cameras, sure. A DSLR, below the D5/1Dx class, not a chance.

History has shown time and time again the high prices only keep profits up short term for this type of 'disposable' product.

WestEndFoto

Unless you are a pro, an FX camera is certainly a luxury good in my view. I imagine that D810s are sold to more amateurs than pros, so it is therefore a luxury good.

In my view.....

Ironheart

I was using an economic definition of "luxury goods" rather than the colloquial definition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_goods

"In economics, a luxury good is a good for which demand increases more than proportionally as income rises, and is a contrast to a "necessity good", for which demand increases proportionally less than income."

"Luxury goods are said to have high income elasticity of demand: as people become wealthier, they will buy more and more of the luxury good. This also means, however, that should there be a decline in income its demand will drop. Income elasticity of demand is not constant with respect to income, and may change sign at different levels of income. That is to say, a luxury good may become a normal good or even an inferior good at different income levels, e.g. a wealthy person stops buying increasing numbers of luxury cars for his or her automobile collection to start collecting airplanes (at such an income level, the luxury car would become an inferior good)."

This may be where Nikon is headed:
"Some luxury products have been claimed to be examples of Veblen goods, with a positive price elasticity of demand: for example, making a perfume more expensive can increase its perceived value as a luxury good to such an extent that sales can go up, rather than down."