Canon's digital dominance (page 2 of 2)

For instance in SLR (Single Lens Reflex) market in Europe, we have about 40-50 percent marketshare. So you tend to stick to your business, but competition is always trying to change the market and they are quicker. We have a lot of technology, but the question was whether we should go in for that and once you have made up your mind then things go very fast. But until that it takes a long time. We have had too long a monopolistic situation and monopoly is not good, it makes you easy and lazy.


Q. How difficult is the reentry proving to be?

We are doing rather well in the Middle East. In the camera group, we have a very good marketshare. It has been easy to build on our strength in the analog, so in digital still cameras it has been easy, may not be the same in video, but overall we are up there in the top three.

Q. What is your target?

A.Canon Inc global has four corporate targets by 2004. First is that in every single product and everywhere in the market, we want to be the number one. Second is that we are trying to develop new products like monitors etc, this will be some important new business. The third is that we want to make our company financially very solid company. Canon is already the number one among the Japanese companies in this industry, so while we are moving on with digitalization, we are also working hard on cost reductions. Right from supply chain to production methods we are trying to reduce our costs. The fourth target is to drive our people towards digitalization and productive, customer-oriented marketing strategies.

Q. With such a wide product range and so much competition in each product line, how do you plan your marketing strategies and identify competition?

A. The most important thing is how we line ourselves up in the channel strategies, especially in this area or region it is very important. We are seeing a realignment of the markets in Europe and in middle east with integration of the market which has already happened in Europe and is happening in the Gulf, so we are reorganizing our sales strategy.