"We didn't do anything wrong, but don't know why, we lost". Former Nokia CEO Joma Olilla's quote is regarded as a classic, and it is always mentioned whenever a company is reduced to "tears of the times".
In 2012, Kodak went bankrupt; ten years later, history repeats itself, and news of canon's suspension of production at its Zhuhai plant is boiling over. They didn't lose to anyone, maybe just to the rolling times.
Now, Kodak is entering medicine with its chemical strengths; Canon and Sony are planning to seize opportunities on the body of self-driving cars with lenses. Once frozen in eternity, will they have a bright future?
First iteration
The story of timelessness begins more than 100 years ago. In 1889, under the trend of gelatin dry plates replacing wet plate photography, Eastman Kodak came into being.
Every step after that, from browning cassette cameras to point-and-shoot cameras to Krom film, Kodak was on a steady track. Founder George Eastman proudly said, "You just have to press a button and we'll do the rest." ”
The last 20 years of the 20th century were the highlight era of Kodak, and in 1996, Kodak's annual turnover reached $16 billion, with a net profit of more than $2.5 billion, and it was rated as the world's most valuable fourth-largest brand.
By 2002, even after a hundred years, Kodak still held the title of film overlord, with a global turnover of 12.8 billion US dollars and a total of about 70,000 employees.
But ten years later, it is no longer the storm.
In the new century, digital cameras have replaced film, and Kodak has come to the final step. New York, U.S., January 19, 2012, Kodak filed an application for bankruptcy protection under the Bankruptcy Act. Documents at the time showed that Kodak had existing assets of $5.1 billion, but its debt was $6.8 billion.
In the same year of Kodak's bankruptcy, Canon's turnover reached 3,479.7 billion yen, equivalent to about 40 billion US dollars at the time, ranking 224th in the global Fortune 500 in 2012. Against the backdrop of the global economic downturn following the European debt crisis, Canon saw sales and profits fall for the first time in three years.
By then, the light of the times had belonged to the company, founded in 1937. With a 35mm lens shutter and a 35mm SLR camera, the Canonflex, Canon only emerged in the mid-to-late 20th century.
In line with the tide of mechanical manufacturing and electronic technology, in the mid-1980s, Canon put high-grade AF SLR cameras with its own characteristics into the market, and the EOS system ushered in a new era of SLR cameras.
In 1989, 100 years after the birth of Kodak, while still focusing on film, Canon had launched the "EOS-1" series, the top of the EOS series at the time, with picture quality, high-speed focusing, and continuous shooting capabilities, which were well received by professional photographers.
Years of accumulation, finally in the beginning of the new century, in 2006, in the U.S. camera market, Canon's shipments reached 6.069 million units, officially surpassing Kodak and becoming the new hegemon with a market share of 20%.
By the end of the first decade, global sales of digital cameras peaked, with annual sales of more than 120 million units.
Ten years and ten years
The change of times will not spare any company, and ten years later, it will be Canon's turn.
January 15, 2022, was originally the 32nd anniversary of the establishment of Canon Zhuhai Co., Ltd. But before that, the announcement on the Internet showed that Canon Zhuhai Co., Ltd. officially announced on January 12, 2022 that it would terminate the company's production and proposed a compensation plan for employees.
From statutory economic compensation to special consolation payments, the generous compensation scheme given by Canon Zhuhai has been widely spread on social platforms and has been ridiculed as "good gathering and good dispersion".
The emotion is still there, but the market is merciless.
As an important production base of Canon in China, Canon Zhuhai Co., Ltd. is the first to enter the World's top 500 companies in Zhuhai, and its card digital cameras once accounted for half of Canon's global card digital camera sales, with an annual production capacity of 20 million units.
It's all a thing of the past. In 2020, Canon Zhuhai actually produced 12.29 million lenses, 1.029 million digital cameras and 94,000 digital video cameras.
Canon's retreat in Zhuhai is just a microcosm, and the decline has been evident for several years. From 2017 to 2019, the turnover of imaging system products with cameras, lenses, and imaging equipment as the core was 1,099.13 billion yen, 970.44 billion yen, and 807.41 billion yen, respectively. By 2020, this figure is only 541.31 billion yen, or about 30.1 billion yuan.
As for the reason for the shutdown, Canon's external statement is that with the development of smart phones, the market size of small digital cameras has been different from before. The impact of the epidemic and the shortage of chips have also made it difficult for the Zhuhai factory to operate. Under the upgrading of consumption and industry, Canon needs to make adjustments according to market changes.
Canon defeated Kodak, and what beat Canon is known to everyone. In 2017, the production of digital cameras and digital camera accessories in Nikon Optical Instruments (China) Co., Ltd. was completed. As for the reason, Nikon said that due to the rise of smartphones, the small digital camera market is shrinking rapidly, the operating rate has also dropped significantly, and it has become difficult to continue to operate.
Data is even more direct and cruel. According to market research firm Counterpoint Research, global smartphone shipments were 521 million units in 2011 and 1.331 billion units by 2020. In the same year, the global shipment of digital cameras was less than 10 million units, and the shipment of SLR cameras was 2.37 million units, a drop of 47%, and the signal was obvious enough.
The big ship turned around
Ten years later, new hegemons have risen and fallen.
For the collapse of the giant, public opinion is always lamenting. For example, Nokia fell, some people said that they were obsessed with Symbian and rejected Android; Kodak fell, and some people said that they were afraid of fighting each other with their left and right hands and rejected digital cameras. At the end of the day, it's all missed new offers handed over by the times.
Yin Jian is not far away, in the life after the summer. As for Canon and Nikon, shrinkage and transformation are necessary. Canon Chairman and CEO Fujifu Mitsuru has long said that Canon digital camera production will be halved in the next two years, and gradually shift to the professional market after production reaches the bottom.
Office supplies, medical imaging, Canon's focus has changed. In the third quarter of 2021, Canon's turnover was 833.3 billion yen, of which the printing business was 459.2 billion yen, accounting for about 55%, the imaging business was 153.8 billion yen, accounting for about 18%, and the turnover of medical business, industrial equipment and other products business areas was more than 100 billion yen.
The latest news shows that Canon is trying to split the self-driving. After the closure of the Zhuhai plant, it was reported that Canon recently announced that it has signed a memorandum of cooperation with the autonomous driving company Tier IV to jointly develop L4 level autonomous driving technology and related in-vehicle camera products, and load them on Tier IV's self-driving vehicles for testing.
L4 level, already the level of autonomous driving where the driver can leave the steering wheel with both hands.
A similar choice was made by Nikon, which in 2018 invested $25 million in lidar Velodyne to partner with to develop sensing components and scanners that are expected to venture into self-driving cars. By last year, Nikon's circle of friends included perception system manufacturer Aeva, which had received investment from Porsche and worked with car companies such as Tucson Future.
Although the need for transformation is not as strong as that of Canon and Nikon, Sony, which was also a camera giant, has also set its sights on the track of autonomous driving. At CES 2022 (International Consumer Electronics Exhibition) in early January, Sony Group CEO Kenichiro Yoshida announced that Sony will set up a division responsible for all-electric vehicles this spring, Sony Mobile.
At the exhibition, Sony also brought a new pure electric SUV - VISION-S 02 concept car to show its determination.
As for Kodak, which has been "gone" for a long time, it seems to have found its own new direction. In July 2020, Kodak received a $765 million loan from the U.S. federal government to produce apis, including those to fight COVID-19. At the time, Kodak CEO Jim Continenza said the new division was expected to create hundreds of jobs within the U.S. and that pharmaceutical ingredient production was expected to account for 30 to 40 percent of Kodak's business in the future.
Kodak's old rival Fujifilm, transformed even earlier. As early as 2009, Fuji acquired Ben toyama Chemical Pharmaceutical, which developed the flu drug "favipiravir", and during the epidemic, favipiravir once became a popular anti-epidemic drug.
Film or digital cameras, in the new era of faster and faster replacement, nothing will be eternal, even if frozen, it is only once. For example, Kodak and Canon, as long as they find themselves again, they are not completely lost to the times.
Beijing Business Daily reporter Tang Yitian