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Nikkei Asian Review pays tribute to Canon’s amazing lens line-up, the best money can buy. 93 among EF and Cine lenses.

TOKYO — Quite a few photography buffs will tell you: The lens makes the camera. And for storied single-lens reflex camera manufacturers like Canon, lenses might be the secret to surviving the era of smartphone ubiquity, too.

The market for digital cameras peaked in 2010 and has been shrinking ever since. As smartphone cameras improve, fewer and fewer consumers see a need to lug around an SLR, or even a compact point-and-shoot. Shipments of single-lens cameras fell 11.1% on the year in 2016, by volume.

In response, camera companies are looking for a new niche, with features not found in smartphone cameras. Lenses — from super telephoto models to ultrawide angles — offer the manufacturers myriad ways to differentiate themselves.

Over three decades, Canon has produced more than 130 million EF (Electro-Focus)-mount lenses for its SLRs, carving out a leading market share in Japan. The country’s lens market has been shrinking since 2012, but this year it is expected to return to growth, and Canon is once again asserting itself with a wide variety of products.

Even as the domestic lens market was declining, Canon continued to ramp up production by 10 million units a year, on average. Total output of EF lenses surpassed 50 million units in 2009 and 100 million in 2014.

Read at Nikkei Asian Review

Thomson Reuters compiled a list of what they consider the world’s top 100 tech leaders. Canon is listed, Sony is listed, Fuji is listed, Nikon is not.

In their words:

Today, we’re watching the gradual evolution from the Knowledge Economy to the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Virtuality. With it comes a fundamental shift in what it means to be a leader in this rapidly changing marketplace. That’s why we developed a first-of-its-kind ranking methodology for the technology sector.

Applying the intelligence, technology, and human expertise of Thomson Reuters, we have identified industry leaders poised to thrive at the intersection of regulation and commerce. The result is the Thomson Reuters Top 100 Global Tech Leaders.

See the list at Thomson Reuters.

The video below gives a brief overview about the methodology used to select the top 100 global technology leaders.

We reported about Canon’s efforts to conquer outer space in the past. Here is another step Canon is making in the company’s space race.

Nikkei Asian Review:

TOKYO — Canon Electronics, IHI Aerospace and two other partners are looking to build the first private-sector rocket launch site in Japan by 2021, a major step forward for nongovernment players in the space sector here.

The location, specializing in small rockets, will be operated by a joint venture founded last summer by the Canon> and IHI units with general contractor Shimizu and the Development Bank of Japan. They are looking to begin construction in the Wakayama Prefecture town of Kushimoto, at the southernmost point of the main Japanese island of Honshu. A final decision will come after a geological survey.

[…]

The new site would allow civilian players greater freedom in scheduling launches, instead of working around the government’s plans. The quartet also aims to be able to launch 100kg-class small satellites at about a tenth of the cost of the H-IIA rocket, one of JAXA’s mainstay launch vehicles.

The joint venture previously announced plans to develop its own small rocket and could start taking orders for satellite launches by the end of the year. It plans to send up the first such rocket from the new site in 2021.

Canon works to build low-cost rockets for satellites, high-resolution earth-imaging-systems (with EOS 5D Mark IV), and they even launch their own satellites. To see all Canon space efforts we covered click here.