Japan's Konica Minolta, one of the world's leading photographic equipment makers, said today that it would stop making all cameras because the market had become too competitive.
The company plans to slash 3,700 jobs or about 11% 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.
Konica Minolta will also gradually stop making camera film by 2007 to focus on its more profitable optics and medical imaging activities.
'In today's era of digital cameras it became difficult to timely provide competitive products even with our top optical, mechanical and electronics technologies,' the company said in a statement.
'For colour film and colour paper, while considering our customer needs, we will step-by-step reduce product lineup and cease our film production and colour paper by the end of fiscal year ending March 31, 2007,' it added.
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.
Konica Minolta has struggled to adapt to the rapidly changing shift to digital photography and away from traditional film. It slumped into the red in the first half of the current financial year and forecast a large full-year loss due to falling sales of conventional photo film and intense competition in digital cameras.
The group, formed through the 2003 merger of Konika and Minolta, made a net loss of 3.48 billion yen ($30.2m) in the first half to September, reversing a net profit of 8.20 billion yen a year earlier. In November it forecast a net loss of 47 billion yen for the full year.
