Thoms view of Nikons Financials.....

[anubis]

http://www.bythom.com/

Nikon 2006 Financials
The final results from Nikon's fiscal 2006 (ended March 31, 2006) have been posted by the company. Overall, it was mostly good news. The Imaging division had sales of 417 billion yen, up from 356 billion the previous year (17% growth). Profits were up slightly over 100% to 34 billion yen (from 17 billion in 2005).

Coolpix unit sales were up sharply, hitting 7.1 million units, an increase of 1.5 million units from 2005. DSLR sales were up by almost a third to 1.34 million units from 2005's 1.05 million units. DSLR sales rebounded in the fourth quarter after an unexpected third quarter drop, but did not rebound quite as much as anticipated (which explains the recent price drops on the D50 and D70s kits). 2.02 million lenses were sold in the year, up from 1.5 million the previous year. One word of caution: much to the profit improvement can be attributed to currency exchange benefits.

Much more interesting are the forecasts for the current fiscal year. Coolpix projections are flat, which I would take to mean no revolutionary products will be introduced in the digicam lineup. Not that we won't get an update or two along the way, but the relative flatness of the predictions indicate nothing radically new in the pipeline and no major new model lineup (I think we're stuck with the P, S, and L series for the coming year).

With DSLRs, however, something is clearly up. The second half of 2006 was an uncharacteristically poor showing for Nikon DSLRs, with sales dropping almost 30% in unit volume from the first half of 2006 (some of that was self-inflicted with the D200 announcement before Christmas but inability to deliver). But for the first half of fiscal 2007 Nikon predicts a sudden and large rebound (from 550k units to 850k units). I really don't think that's going to happen with more discounts, so there must be at least one new DSLR in the wings. Lenses also show a rebound from a droop in the second half of 2006, so I'll bet on a late spring, early summer launch of DSLRs and lenses. Specifically, I now expect a modest change in the D2x and a replacement for the D70s along with some of the known missing lenses (e.g. 70-300mm VR, 400mm VR, etc.).

Nikon's overall prediction of their DSLR market share was 34% in 2006 and is 35% in 2007. If that holds true, that would be a remarkable performance considering the competition coming from the big new players (Sony, Samsung, and Panasonic).