Nikon Hints Possible Entry to Smartphone Market as Point-and-Shoot Sales Drop

Camera performance is the new battleground for mobile devices and this can be just the opportunity that camera manufacturers like Nikon are looking to generate growth in the face of a shrinking market.

Global shipments of compact digital cameras slid 48 percent in May from a year earlier, while more expensive single-lens-reflex sets, or SLRs, declined about 6 percent, according to the Camera & Imaging Products Association in Tokyo.

“The number of people taking snapshots is exploding by use of smartphones that sold 750 million or so last year and are still growing,” Nikon’s President Makoto Kimura said during a recent interview in Tokyo. “We’ve centralized our ideas around cameras but can change our approach to offer products to that bigger market.”

That bigger market could very well be smartphones as shipments jumped 46% last year to 722 million units, according to Framingham, Massachusetts-based IDC Corp

But if you’re lusting over one of the best camera manufacturers to announce a phone next year, you best not be holding your breath.

Nikon’s imaging division and a new business team are working on products to expand to company’s business and generate growth but these new products are expected to be available in less than five years, according to President Kimura.

“We want to create a product that will change the concept of cameras,” said Kimura. “It could be a non-camera consumer product.” However, Kimura declined to say if Nikon is indeed developing a smartphone.

But he did elaborate further to say that the “rapid expansion of mobile devices is a change in business environment given to us,” Kimura said. “Our task going forward is to find an answer to that change.”

At the very least, they are toying with the idea of a smartphone. In any case, a Nikon smartphone can be a natural product progression for the company considering they already have an Android-powered point-and-shoot in their product lineup.

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