Panasonic to dismantle digital camera business

The timing of the GH5 release and this announcement are entirely coincidental (financial reports are usually compiled on a quarterly basis and the Japanese fiscal year is about to end).

As to their higher end/pro division, it's an interesting question because LT does almost as much as the Pure and for a lot less. I assume there's a next generation 8K camera somewhere down the road but the big TV production sales are about the workflow and, generally speaking, workflow is not all that expensive and TV isn't going into 8K for scripted and news any time soon (sports is a different matter entirely). This leaves something like URSA Mini Pro to be a solid contender for a lot of jobs, presuming its dependability is raised to the rest of the market (F55, Varicam, Alexa, Amira, Red Dragon) and a $6,000 independent feature/medium budget TV production camera may be taken as a sign that the market has reached a level that Panasonic might not find comfortable.

Thus, it had to cut costs and that it will.

PS. Insofar as the product cycle goes, there's almost an untapped consumer 4K audience left, considering that neither Nikon or Canon has yet made an affordable 4K ASP-C sensor model with a GH5 level performance.
 
Paul F said:
Indeed. I've wondered about this. Just how much longer can cameras and televisions go on? Who needs 8K? My vision isn't 20-20 and my living room can't fit a 10' panel. The cameras do everything but compose the shot now. Yes, the microcosm of filmmaking still wants a few more things, but that business is a spit in the ocean compared to consumer electronics and consumer electronics is suffering, so imagine the pain in the professional business.
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I recall when I used to buy $80,000.00 Betacams, life was good. The payments were high but so were the profit margins and the camera models stayed state of the art for about five years, it was great. I would not be averse to the video industry doing a bit of that again. If all companies are going to do is increase resolution with eacch new model, than we can stop the merry go round right where we are for a few years, it would be nice to not have every camera you buy be instantly outdated. What do you guys think? Besides increases in linear resolution, I am not seeing a lot of true innovation in pro video cameras and digital cinema cameras over the past couple of years. Is the RED Helium Sensor camera a huge leap over the previous REDs? Is the C700 a stratospheric leap in technology over the C300 MKII? Not really, IMHO.

I think the camera industry is hurting exactly because of the points discussed here, they just incrementally increase a few features and call it a new model, it's very much in the vein of the U.S. Automakers circa 1958. It seems as if they intro a model that is deficient of certain features that really should have been included. For the C100 MKI, a usable VF. For the C100 MKII, 4K. For the C300 MKII, 4K 60P and full resolution slow motion. For the FS7, variable ND, good color science and not having to pay thousands extra to shoot Prores. It really feel as if it's all motivated by sales strategy, like they are just trying to get you to buy a camera that has most of what you want, but not not 90%, they want you to buy the MKII version a year or two later. I know camera companies are the in the business of always trying to sell you a new camera but it gets old. I wouldn't mind paying 20% more to just get what you want/need, then keeping it for four or five years, then buying another. The 6 month to 14 month product cycle is really a hindrance in trying to efficiently run your business.
 
Is this announcement really any different from what Sony did two years ago, when they sold off/restructured/got rid of basically all their electronics businesses, to concentrate on (as this article says) Hollywood, Playstations, and phone cameras?
http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/18/8063269/sony-electronics-future-selling-off-pc-smartphone-tv

Apparently life isn't that easy for multi-mega-billion-dollar conglomerates. But I don't know how Sony's restructing has hampered anyone from buying an FS5 or an A7SII, nor do I expect that any of Panasonic's machinations here will affect the sales of their product line, neither a jot nor a tittle. But, I guess, we shall see.

When news broke that Sony was spinning off their camera division, you would have thought the sky was falling -- but really, has it made the slightest difference to the consumer? I mean, that was over two years ago, you'd think we'd see some difference now. But is there anything substantially different? I don't know.

So is the sky falling this time? I'd say probably not.
 
Good point. What gets people sitting up is the word 'dismantle'. It is an alarming term, but not incorrect. So a business unit disappears. This restructuring is nothing compared to what Panasonic had to do a few years ago, when it was in real trouble and had to layoff tens of thousands. This is a minor correction in comparison to that.
 
puredrifting said:
I recall when I used to buy $80,000.00 Betacams, life was good. The payments were high but so were the profit margins and the camera models stayed state of the art for about five years, it was great. I would not be averse to the video industry doing a bit of that again. If all companies are going to do is increase resolution with eacch new model, than we can stop the merry go round right where we are for a few years, it would be nice to not have every camera you buy be instantly outdated. What do you guys think? Besides increases in linear resolution, I am not seeing a lot of true innovation in pro video cameras and digital cinema cameras over the past couple of years. Is the RED Helium Sensor camera a huge leap over the previous REDs? Is the C700 a stratospheric leap in technology over the C300 MKII? Not really, IMHO...
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here was the VCR product cycle.

Early 1970 - introduction, available at the pro level only.

Mid-70's - mass market production but the early adapters are paying through the nose (JVC Vidstar was $1,280 in 1976 when an average car was $4,200).

early 1980's - affordable for the middle class but still not cheap, $400-$800 ( a week's wage)

mid 1980's - players only for as low as $200 (for those who just rented tapes), 2-head ~ $300, 4-head HiFi $600-$800

late 80's/early 90's - off-brands $200, major brands 4-head HiFi $500, digital features $800

mid -1990's - $200 for 4-head HiFi major brand

late 1990's/early 2000's - $100 for the above

mid 2000's - $50 for the above

mid -2010's - VCR production ends after a 40 year cycle.

From the sales and manufacturing perspective, VCR's were hot throughout the 80's. The margins were good and the quantities sold were very high. By the mid-90's, they become a commodity. The numbers are way down and the margins are getting close to nil. The next decade, it's become almost an accessory. "You're interested in a VCR, sir? They're over in that pile in the corner. Right next to the RCA connectors, the answering machine cassettes and the speaker wire".

And the question becomes - what year is this for the pro video cameras? In the VCR years, I say it's about 1989.
 
As I've mentioned elsewhere, a quick look at B&H shows 35 "cameras" listed from Panasonic. Panny has 10 consumer grade camcorders, They list 18 professional camcorders. It seems to me that they could easily kill off 20 or more of their cameras, and the marketplace would not even notice. The low end is being cannibalized by the cell phone market and is probably drawing to a close. The loyalty of the customer that exists would have to come back to the high end professional gear. We are all willing to pay more for the features of the pro gear. The timing of this couldn't be worse for PR. I have owned a GH4 and currently own a GX8. I have owned a HMC150 in the past. This year, I expect to buy a GH5, and likely sell off a C100. I am certainly going to put the GH5 on hold for a month, and let this shake out.

Glad to see Barry weigh in, I was wondering what his thoughts would be, as he has more experience with Panny than just about anyone. And yes, Sony (and Panny) have gone through this before, and appear to have come out of it. What I worry about in a reorg like this is watching a pro division severly limit the feature set of the GH5, for example, like what we see Canon doing right now. At one point I had and liked the 5D mkiii, but the MkiV was just a crazy set of features and pushed me to sell my GH4 and prepare to buy the GH5. Now this announcement from Panny.

I guess the old BB King song "Never make your move too soon." fits here. Will have to see what the next 30 days brings, if anything. My assumption is nothing will change.
 
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8string said:
What I worry about in a reorg like this is watching a pro division severly limit the feature set of the GH5, for example, like what we see Canon doing right now
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As I understand it, the Panasonic consumer and pro divisions merged a couple of years ago. There is no competition between them, they are the same division in the same company.

The sales companies are not the same, but the design/manufacturing company is the same. So they will do whatever it is to their advantage to move units; they are not in competition with each other like in years past. I don't know how Sony or Canon do it, but that's the way Panasonic does it as far as I understand.
 
OUT OF Canada comes this information posted on MU43:

"In response to the Nikkei story, Panasonic has put out the following statement:

'The recent article featured on the Nikkei regarding Panasonic’s Imaging business was not announced by Panasonic and refers to a change in our internal organizational structure.

Integrating all consumer electronics divisions, our consumer Digital Imaging business will move under Panasonic Appliances Company and is not being dismantled.

The aim of this change is to further deepen our relationships with customers, strengthen our product capabilities, and continue to firmly develop and promote our business.' "
 
JeffD7K said:
....Integrating all consumer electronics divisions, our consumer Digital Imaging business will move under Panasonic Appliances Company and is not being dismantled.

The aim of this change is to further deepen our relationships with customers, strengthen our product capabilities, and continue to firmly develop and promote our business.' "
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That makes sense. The annual report shows that there are four business areas (customer facing - Consumer, Automotive, B2B, Housing) and four internal companies (Appliances, Automotive and Industrial, ECO, and AVC Network). Digital cameras was in the AVC Networks company, which was largely aligned with the B2B business area. With it now in Appliances, it will be more closely tied to the Consumer Electronics business area. I'm assuming the majority of their digital camera business is consumer rather than business, so the new umbrella they are under is appropriate.
 
Barry_Green said:
As I understand it, the Panasonic consumer and pro divisions merged a couple of years ago. There is no competition between them, they are the same division in the same company.

The sales companies are not the same, but the design/manufacturing company is the same. So they will do whatever it is to their advantage to move units; they are not in competition with each other like in years past. I don't know how Sony or Canon do it, but that's the way Panasonic does it as far as I understand.
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Several years ago, the pro/broadcast division, much to the dismay of many dealers, was put under control of those in the laptop division. I say dismay of many dealers, because of the way that distribution, etc. began to be handled and you can only imagine how it was to deal with people that didn't understand how this crazy, wacky business that most of us live in really works.
 
DLD said:
So, GH5 is still using a 28 nM technology. That's a bit behind the times. Sony, Samsung and Qualcomm have long moved to 14-16 nM, with Qualcomm already having announced a 10 nM chip that will be manufactured for them by Samsung.

http://www.investors.com/news/technology/click/qualcomm-introduces-first-10-nanometer-mobile-chip/
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The GH5 can produce 4K@60 4:2:2 (using an external recorder) and 4K@60 4:2:0 internally, that's good enough for me!

Size doesn't always matter! :)
 
DLD said:
So, GH5 is still using a 28 nM technology. That's a bit behind the times. Sony, Samsung and Qualcomm have long moved to 14-16 nM, with Qualcomm already having announced a 10 nM chip that will be manufactured for them by Samsung.

http://www.investors.com/news/technology/click/qualcomm-introduces-first-10-nanometer-mobile-chip/
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What does that "28 nm technology" quote refer to? Different chips use different processes, and they remain state-of-the-art. On the iphone 7, you have a 20/16 nm processor, 28 nm transceiver, 15 nm flash memory... and 90 nm image sensor with 28 nm ISP.
http://www.techinsights.com/about-techinsights/overview/blog/apple-iphone-7-teardown/
 
Samuel H said:
What does that "28 nm technology" quote refer to? ...
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To the EOSHD quote from the Panasonic rep that "GH5 has the same 28 nM chip as GH4 but it's managing the heat better due to help from their TV engineers".

The main processor, rather than flash memory or digital two way radio, is obviously what causes the heat built up both in smartphones and cameras. The smartphones, due to their thin bodies, clearly have a bigger problem with that and, given that the smartphones are a humongous business, there's a great financial incentive for the associated manufacturers to keep advancing in all faucets of technology.

But,the point remains. 28 nM processors are several years behind the curve and I'd venture a guess that their market prices are very low these days. It seems to suffice for GH5 and may help it save a few bucks along the way.
 
That sounds like the processor, yes.
28nm is not cutting edge for an ISP, but it's the same process Apple is using on the iphone 7, and I'm not sure Sony is using a much better process here: the a6500 still has the same Bionz X (CXD 90014) processor of the a6000 (although paired with a new LSI that must be doing lots of preprocessing; maybe Panasonic is doing something like that).
The problem with these is that there's no market price: they're custom ASICs, designed by the camera manufacturer. A few months ago I would have said they can't go with an off-the-shelf ISP because those can't do log, 10-bit, nice codec, etc (all those nice things we like) but the latest generation has specs I wasn't expecting: the 14nm Ambarella H3 can do 4k 60 fps 10-bit HDR HEVC (it was announced recently, but Ambarella seems to have a long announcement-to-availability delay, think BlackMagic Ursa Mini).
http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com.es/2017/01/ambarella-introduces-33mp-30fps-camera.html
 
Run&Gun said:
Several years ago, the pro/broadcast division, much to the dismay of many dealers, was put under control of those in the laptop division. I say dismay of many dealers, because of the way that distribution, etc. began to be handled and you can only imagine how it was to deal with people that didn't understand how this crazy, wacky business that most of us live in really works.
Click to expand...
That did happen, yes -- and that has since been rectified. And there was much rejoicing.
 
Samuel H said:
That sounds like the processor, yes.
28nm is not cutting edge for an ISP, but it's the same process Apple is using on the iphone 7, and I'm not sure Sony is using a much better process here: the a6500 still has the same Bionz X (CXD 90014) processor of the a6000 (although paired with a new LSI that must be doing lots of preprocessing; maybe Panasonic is doing something like that).
The problem with these is that there's no market price: they're custom ASICs, designed by the camera manufacturer. A few months ago I would have said they can't go with an off-the-shelf ISP because those can't do log, 10-bit, nice codec, etc (all those nice things we like) but the latest generation has specs I wasn't expecting: the 14nm Ambarella H3 can do 4k 60 fps 10-bit HDR HEVC (it was announced recently, but Ambarella seems to have a long announcement-to-availability delay, think BlackMagic Ursa Mini).
http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com.es/2017/01/ambarella-introduces-33mp-30fps-camera.html
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But all those chips are ARM based anyway (including Ambarella's version of C53). It just depends what generation goes in where.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ARMv8-A_cores
 
I wouldn't call it ARM-based. It has both an ISP-specific chunk of silicon and one or more ARM cores. Like the Canon Digic procesors, actually: there's a part optimized for processing images, and a general-purpose processor that runs the UI and sets the registers for the ASIC part.
 
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