Nikon President ponders company’s performance and the future of camera sales

In a recent interview posted on the Nikon website their President, Makoto Kimura, comments on the company’s performance during the first half of the current fiscal year. Kimura uses the interview to address all elements of Nikon’s business portfolio and also make separate statements on what camera aficionados can expect from Nikon in both the short and long term.

With the new Nikon Ds set to be fully unveiled fairly soon attention should be given to Kimura’s comment that “to improve earnings, we must not only reduce costs, but also increase the appeal of our products, and the degree to which they are differentiated. We are less likely to succeed in developing differentiated products, if we only improve the functions and performance of existing equipment. I want Nikon to develop products based on new concepts that raise the bar considerably.” While shining an apparent light on the type of cameras we can expect Nikon to release in the future it runs a little contradictory to recent confirmations that the new Nikon Ds’ body is almost identical to the old version. Kimura’s comments do not necessarily enforce the recent and seemingly intelligent online speculation that the substance of modifications for the Ds will be in the internals not the externals.