Canon Raises Output of Fast-Selling Kiss Digicam
Reuters
2 hours, 38 minutes ago
By Nathan Layne and Kunihiko Kichise
TOKYO (Reuters) - Canon Inc said on Monday it had raised its production capacity for its hot-selling "EOS Kiss" digital single-lens reflex (SLR) camera by about 25 percent, anticipating explosive growth in coming years.
Canon's "EOS Kiss" model has been flying off the shelves since its launch six months ago. Camera lovers were attracted by its 120,000 yen ($1,085) price tag, well below that of competing cameras from Nikon Corp and other rivals.
"After all, to stimulate demand in this (the digital SLR) market, the key points are to improve camera performance and bring the selling price down," Tadaaki Ando, deputy group executive in charge of digital SLRs, told Reuters in an interview.
Digital SLRs are high performance cameras that allow the photographer to change lenses and offer more options and flexibility than simple "point and shoot" compact models, which are equipped with a fixed lens.
Analysts expect Canon and Nikon to dominate the market, as they did in the film era when they sold millions of lenses for use with analog SLRs. A key selling point is that interchangeable lenses from that era can be used on digital SLRs.
Ando said Canon had completed plans to boost monthly production capacity of the "EOS Kiss" by about 25 percent to 100,000 cameras in the first quarter of this year. Half of that capacity is housed in a Taiwan plant and the other half in Japan.
Canon sold 600,000 digital SLRs in 2003, capturing 70 percent of the rapidly growing market and leaving Nikon Corp, which did not have a camera anywhere near the "EOS Kiss" model's price range, in second place with 30 percent.
Ando estimates Canon will sell 1.3 million digital SLRs this year, of which about one million will be the "EOS Kiss." He predicts the market as a whole will reach 2.2 to 2.3 million cameras, nearly triple the 850,000 sold last year.
Including compact models, Canon expects to sell 15 million digital cameras in 2004, up 74 percent year-on-year. Canon battles Sony Corp for the title of world's best-selling brand, each with a market share of around 20 percent.
The "EOS Kiss" is sold under the name "EOS 300D" in Europe and Asia and is known as the "EOS Digital Rebel" in the Americas.
Nikon, for its part, will launch a new digital SLR this Friday called the "D70" to compete with Canon. It will also sell for around 120,000 yen and is expected to attract solid demand given that Nikon has sold millions of lenses and analog SLRs.
While analysts expect the "D70" to help Nikon recapture some of its lost market share, competition will only get tougher with rivals like Konica Minolta Holdings planning to launch a product later this year.
In what could be another headache for Nikon, Canon's Ando said a lower-priced digital SLR could be about one year away.
"If it's not this autumn, then that would probably mean next spring," Ando said, noting the release would then be one-and-a-half years after the original "EOS Kiss." "Development times are so much faster than they were in the film age."
Ando said the next target would be to retail a digital SLR for under 100,000 yen.
Message edited by author 2004-03-15 07:46:38.
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