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Olympus sells photo business

25.6.2020

Translation: machine translated

Olympus is to sell its photo division at the end of the year. The entire business will be taken over by an investor called "Japan Industrial Partners", which is founding a new company for this purpose.

Olympus is selling its photo division to Japan Industrial Partners (JIP). A new company will be founded for this purpose, which will be owned by JIP. Products and support for existing Olympus products will be continued. The handover should be completed by the end of the year.

In addition to photographic equipment, Olympus also manufactures microscopes, endoscopes and various other medical products. This area has been significantly more profitable than the photography business for many years.

The photography business has always been loss-making for Olympus for the last three years. The camera market as a whole is in decline and competition is tough. JIP will not be able to change this situation. But it is possible that JIP will run the business more efficiently.

The big question is whether there will continue to be innovation or whether only me-too products will be launched on the market under the traditional Olympus brand. After all, Olympus was the pioneer of mirrorless system cameras together with Panasonic and, although more of an outsider in the market, has repeatedly developed exciting innovations. JIP's expertise, on the other hand, seems to lie more in capitalising on existing brands: The investor took over the notebook division from Sony and spun it off into its own company called "Vaio". <p

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David Lee

Senior Editor

David.Lee@digitecgalaxus.ch

My interest in IT and writing landed me in tech journalism early on (2000). I want to know how we can use technology without being used. Outside of the office, I’m a keen musician who makes up for lacking talent with excessive enthusiasm.

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