Konica Minolta withdraws from camera, film business

Japan's Konica Minolta Holdings Inc. said it would withdraw from the camera and color film businesses, marking the end to one of the best known brands in the photography world. As part of the surprise move, Konica Minolta said it would sell a portion of its digital single lens reflex (SLR) camera assets to Sony Corp. for an undisclosed sum and cease production of compact cameras by March. It would also stop production of minilabs by March. The company said it would stop making photographic film and color paper by March 2007, pulling out of a market shrinking more than 20% a year due to the spread of digital cameras, which don't use film to store images.

Konica Minolta, created in August 2003 through the merger of Konica Corp. and Minolta Co., has a long history in the camera and film markets, producing Japan's first photographic paper in 1903 and the country's first color film in 1940. Konica Minolta said it would continue to produce digital SLR camera bodies and lenses for Sony based on its Maxxum/Dynax mount system and owners of those lenses will be able to use them on new digital SLR models to be developed by Sony. But the Konica Minolta brand will disappear, ending a legacy that started when a predecessor of Konica introduced its first camera in 1903. The first Minolta brand camera came in 1933, followed by Konica in 1948.

channelnewsasia.com :

Japan's Konica Minolta, one of the world's leading photographic equipment manufacturers, said it would stop making all cameras because the market had become too competitive. The announcement comes less than a week after Nikon unveiled plans to stop selling most of its film cameras to focus on hot-selling digital models.

The company plans to slash 3,700 jobs or about 11 percent of its global workforce by 2007 under a restructuring package that will also see part of its business making high-end digital cameras sold off to Sony.

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