Leica is eager to create new businesses, which Canon and Nikon should learn from

2020.02.12 06:00

What is your impression of the German camera manufacturer Leica Camera AG (hereinafter referred to as "Leica")?

I imagine that many Japanese have the impression that Leica is a manufacturer of high-end German-made cameras, which are used by Tama-chan's father, a character in the TV animation "Chibi Maruko-chan.

今日は、たまちゃんのお父さんのお誕生日なんだよ、おめでとうー！ pic.twitter.com/sx2fRNk170

— ちびまる子ちゃん【公式】 (@tweet_maruko) September 13, 2016

Leica's predecessor was a microscope manufacturer founded in 1849. Carl Zeiss, another German manufacturer of high-end optical instruments, was founded three years earlier in 1846. Japan's major optical instrument makers were all born in the 20th century.

There are not many businesses in the world that have lasted for more than 170 years. I believe that the company has been able to continue to this day not only because of its outstanding technological capabilities, but also because it has flexibly changed the nature of its business in response to changes in the external environment. Many Japanese companies that demonstrated a high level of creativity during the lifetime of their founders have fallen one after another as their history became riddled with "lord chamberlain" who disliked change. Leica and Carl Zeiss are in contrast to many Japanese companies.

In this article last October 13, I introduced three new concept products. The first of these is the action cam, a market pioneered by the U.S.-based GoPro. In this article, I pointed out the small image sensor and narrow dynamic range as the shortcomings of action cams as of last October, and suggested that Canon commercialize an action cam that uses a 1-inch sensor, which is often used in high-end compact digital cameras.

Canon, with its old, technologically illiterate management, did not respond to my proposal, but to my surprise, an action cam with a 1-inch sensor, equipped with a camera module developed by Leica, a company with more than 170 years of history, is to be released at the end of this month.

Shenzhen Arashi Vision, a start-up camera manufacturer founded in 2014 and headquartered in Shenzhen, China, focuses its products on 360° cameras under the "insta360" brand.

It is the company's "insta360 one R 1inch edition," which will be released later this month, that features the world's first 1-inch sensor camera module for action cams, developed by Leica.

Looking at BCN's ranking of last year's camera sales, one can read an extremely interesting phenomenon: the GoPro "HERO 7 Black" action cam is in third place, and DJI's OSMO POCKET handheld camera with built-in stabilizer is in 20th place. The camera market as a whole continues to shrink, but this should be understood as the market saying "No" to camera makers who do not bring attractive new concept cameras to the market, but only make old-fashioned concept cameras, and whose old-headed management clings to power.

Leica was and still is a small company, not even close to the size of Carl Zeiss or the major Japanese camera manufacturers. Therefore, there is a limit to what it can do on its own. However, because of its world-class optics technology, it has developed a camera module for the above-mentioned "insta360 one R 1inch edition" and is supplying lenses for high-end models of Huawei smartphones.

Canon and Nikon, which currently appear to be facing an existential crisis, might want to take a lesson from Leica.

first appearance : AGORA