14 DAY TRIAL // Olympus hasn't made any announcements at this year's CES regarding its digital camera business and is probably saving all the surprises for next month's CP+ show in Tokyo, Japan.
In an interview for AmateurPhotographer, Toshi Terada, SLR products planning manager at Olympus, confirmed that we will no longer see any DSLR cameras anytime soon, but he didn't rule out the possibility to re-enter the DSLR market in the future.
“Nobody knows 10 years away... once we can get a very nice share [in mirrorless] we may expand the business to DSLR again, but at this moment we are just concentrating on mirrorless and we have no plan to go into DSLR,” said Toshi Terada.
With compact camera sales in decline, according to last year's sales figures, Olympus is planning to focus most of its attention on the mirrorless camera market, which enjoys a lot of attention from both DSLR and compact camera users.
The mirrorless segment is even more popular in Japan as well as most Asian countries in comparison with European and US markets. This trend is mostly due to the current technological advancements in the field that allows interchangeable-lens cameras to deliver outstanding image quality that rivals even the best DSLRs on the market.
The company reported a more than double operating loss for the last year in comparison with the year before, although it has made various cost reduction efforts. Despite this, it bets most of its resources for the digital imaging business on the mirrorless segment and plans to release more OM-D models this year.
One of them is the OM-D E-M10 planned to be unveiled at the end of this month as the last rumors state. The E-M10 packs the same sensor as the E-M5 and will feature the current E-M1 image processor.