Canon Foresees No Dip in Consumer Sales, Predicts Growth

Despite the European financial crisis, Japan’s leading camera and printer manufacturer Canon (News - Alert) has so far seen no downturn in sales, reports International multimedia news agency Reuters. However, the company cannot predict its effect on the year-end shopping season, the company's chief financial officer told Reuters (News - Alert) on Wednesday.

"We had a global meeting last week, involving the sales heads from America, Europe and Asia," Toshizo Tanaka said in an interview at the company's Tokyo head office. "At that point, there were no pessimistic comments."

According to Reuters, Tanaka’s remarks came days after rival Nikon told Reuters there was some evidence that dealers were putting off orders. This report indicates that Nikon is the world's second-largest player in the profitable single-lens reflex camera market after Canon.

With consumer sentiment fading amid concerns about debt and unemployment in Europe, other consumer electronics makers like Sony and Panasonic (News - Alert) have said that they are also facing an extremely tough environment going into the year-end, usually their most lucrative period, wrote Reuters.

As per the report, like other Japanese consumer electronics makers, Canon is being hurt by the strength of the yen against both dollar and euro. Tanaka said he expected exchange rates to stay near current levels for some time, wrote Reuters reporter Isabel Reynolds. "I think rates may stay as they are for quite a while against both the euro and the dollar," he told Reynolds. "What is happening in Europe is not a cyclical downturn but structural, a financial crisis, so it will take a long time to recover," added Tanaka.

Separately, Tanaka said Canon was unsure whether the suspension of operations at its Thai inkjet printer factory would affect profits, adding that the company could make up some, but not all, production at a plant in Vietnam, Reynolds wrote.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that Canon said it had closed a printer plant and a printer materials facility in Ayutthaya on October 6 and would be unable to operate them until Friday, after the country was hit by its worst floods in 50 years. Concurrently, it is set to open another inkjet printer plant in northern Thailand within weeks, wrote Reynolds.