Three Million Cameras Sold – Canon and Nikon Shine With Financial Results

Industry News

by Georg GilsteinAugust 9^th, 2021

Canon and Nikon released new financial results for the recent quarter, that both exceed expectations and give hope for the foreseeable future and pandemic recovery.

Half a year into 2021 it’s quite interesting to see sales from different manufacturers, especially considering last year’s struggle a lot of businesses suffered from the COVID-19 pandemic. Both Canon and Nikon released new financial results of the previous quarter, with quite good indicators of recovery.

To avoid any confusion up front: Nikon’s fiscal year begins on April 1st, so they released financial results for their 2022 Q1 quarter. Canon on the other hand released Q2 2021 results. This may seem a bit confusing, but the matter of fact is, that both results refer to the last few months.

Nikon’s financial results

To start with Nikon, their image products branch made 50.0B Yen (~$453M) in the last quarter, almost a 100% increase to last year’s (Q1 2021) 25.1B Yen(~$227M). Last year they had an 8.3B Yen loss (~$75.3M), this year they recovered and made a 9.2B Yen (~$83.5M) profit.

Nikon sold 220,000 interchangeable lens cameras, 390,000 lenses, and 70,000 compact cameras. Nikon continues to turn away from entry-level cameras as these are more and more replaced by improving smartphone cameras.

For Nikon, image products isn’t the biggest business branch though, it only covers around 37.8% of their revenue. They also produce devices for semiconductor and flat panel display production, which made more revenue this quarter (39.1% of this quarter’s revenue).

Nikon isn’t as focused on cinema and video production as Canon, but their newest Z series mirrorless cameras feature up-to-date video functions. Also, Nikon fully owns Mark Roberts Motion Control (or MRMC for short), which manufactures high-quality motion control equipment (check our latest coverage of their Bolt Mini Model Mover here).

Canon’s financial results

Canon’s numbers aren’t bad either. They could increase their net sales across all branches from 673.3B Yen (~$6.1B) in Q2 2020 to 881.9B Yen (~$8.0B) in Q2 2021. That’s +31%, but even more appealing is the +77% revenue increase in the imaging branch.

Canon says that camera sales exceeded expectations, likely due to the high demand for their EOS R5 and R6 camera bodies. They are expecting 6 million camera units sold this year, which is a lot, even compared to Nikon (~880,000 units). There is no mention of cinema technology in the financial results, as it is probably not as big of a revenue stream compared to prosumer products.

The Japanese manufacturer doesn’t rely on imaging technology, either. Their primary revenue stream remains their printing branch, with the imaging branch on second.

Like Nikon, they are focussing on the professional camera market, without any mention of small form factor cameras. But this doesn’t apply to these two manufacturers only, as many companies are turning away from point-and-shoot cameras.

Nikon and Canon seem to recover from the ongoing pandemic, both raising their predictions for the upcoming months. But still, neither of them is completely unaffected by the pandemic. The global chip shortage, work-from-home regulations, and general uncertainty make it hard for manufacturers to plan long-term.
We wrote about how manufacturer’s struggles affect our work, you can read it here.

Expanding the lens lineup of mirrorless mounts

Both companies already released capable mirrorless camera bodies. They try to further enhance their mirrorless ecosystem. Canon and Nikon already offer various lenses for their EF and F mount, but lack lens variety on their mirrorless RF and Z mounts. As the two manufacturers obviously will focus more on the latter than their mirror counterparts, mirrorless camera body units will increase and therefore mirrorless lens demand as well.
Canon wrote:

By continuing to enhance our lineup of RF lenses, which currently consists of 22 lenses, we will further strengthen our full-frame mirrorless camera system and increase our market share in this category.

You can find out more financial information in the summary of each product here: Nikon’s Q1 2022 financial results and Canon’s Q2 2021 financial results.

Featured Image by Patrick Fore, Jan Kopřiva, and Maxim Hopman on Unsplash

What do you think about these results? Could you imagine Nikon moving more towards cinema technology? Let us know in the comments.