Winsor Crosby wrote:
> I am business clueless too.
Super quickie summary.
- A business either uses up or produces money.
- A private business must generally produce enough money after expenses
to at least provide a living for the owners.
- A public company must generally make enough money to be comparable
with others in the same business. Otherwise stockholders start selling
their stock and buying stock with better performance. This depresses the
stock price. There are three broad outcomes when that happens:
1. When it gets cheap enough, the corporate assets become worth more
than the stock, somebody buys all the stock and sells off the assets
piecemeal. No more company, products, anything.
2. Someone in the same line buys it, may do a #3 on all but the parts
but that it needs, and uses the rest in its own business. No more
company, but the name and/or some product lines may live on. Minolta's
odyssey through Konica into Sony is an example of this.
3. Someone buys it and does all the stuff prior owners and/or management
couldn't bring themselves to do, reorganization, lay-offs, chopping
parts that are unprofitable, etc. Company lives on, but quite different
and run by different people. Product lines are often lost.
Simple conclusion, Oly must make a reasonable amount of money pretty
regularly or it will cease to exist in anything like its present form.
Whatever you may think about Darwin, his theory applies to businesses
not supported by governments.
This is one likely reason for the E-400. The real bodies they wanted to
produce weren't ready, but they had to have something to sell to keep
money coming in. So they settled on a limited run of an interim model
and sold it in their strongest market, probably also the one with the
best profit margins.
The other thing that keeps worrying me is their inability to get product
out in the market. 410 and 510 announced and working models available
for demo, but actual delivery at retail at least four months away. They
must be really strapped for cash or in some other way to have to do
that. The product is finished, the customers are there, and they have to
endure a third of a year with no DSLR revenue stream except from out
dated products which will probably have to be discounted to get people
to buy them rather than wait for the superior replacements. In the mean
time, others with their latest product ready are selling it.
It is not a healthy situation. Lets hope the digicams have a good year.
Moose
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