Ricoh Co. has announced that Zenji Miura, Vice President, will succeed Shiro Kondo, President, on April 1st 2013. Kondo will become Chairman with the representative right, while the current chairman Masamitsu Sakurai will take up the position of Special Advisor.Miura has been President and Chairman at the French subsidiary from 1993, and became Chief Financial Officer to … [Read more...]

As per reports by major digital camera makers, the annual shipments of digital cameras for the fiscal2012 ending March 2013 will further drop by 6 million units since their latest forecast unveiled. The reason cited is the fast dissemination of multi- functional smartphones.Canon has already closed its book for FY2012, ending in 26.5 million units, 1.3 million less than the … [Read more...]

Olympus Corp. aims to slash interest-bearing debt by around 100 billion yen (US$1.075 billion) as of March 31st next year, more than the 70 billion yen (US$752.7 million) in average annual cuts envisioned in a midterm business plan unveiled last June. The debt tally is slated to decline from an estimated 560 billion yen (US$6.02 billion) as of this March 31 to 460 billion … [Read more...]

Sharp Corp. has agreed to issue shares worth roughly 10 billion yen (US$108.7 million) to Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea to raise much-needed cash. The investment will give Samsung a roughly 3% stake in Sharp, effectively making it Sharp’s No. 5 shareholder overall and the largest, except for financial institutions.Sharp already supplies LCD panels for 32-inch TVs to … [Read more...]

Samsung SDI has replaced Panasonic in the Li-ion cell shipments volume ranking, to became the No.1 supplier in 2012. Samsung gained its share by 1.9 percentage points from the previous year to 25.1%, while Panasonic fell 2.8 points to 20.7%. LG Electronics followed at 16%, down 0.2 point and Sony 7.7%, a 0.8 point down. The share for smartphones increased steadily, … [Read more...]