Nikkei Asian Review reports:

TOKYO — Shares in Canon have been riding a broad rally in Japanese equities since the U.S. presidential election, but the camera maker’s advance seems precarious given an uncertain profit outlook.

Canon edged up 1% on Monday morning but soon started heading south, ending the day down 0.14% at 3,417 yen. “Hedge funds that had taken the yen’s post-election decline as an opportunity to buy the stock apparently decided to lock in some profits,” said an official at Asset Management One.

Canon overtook Keyence in market capitalization last week to become Japan’s most valuable electronics maker for the first time in about five months. Its market cap came to 4.55 trillion yen ($39.6 billion) Monday, more than 110 billion yen above Keyence’s. Investors have pounced on Canon shares, welcoming a dividend yield in the 4% range for the year ending this month.

But this is far from an earnings-driven advance. Analysts are growing bearish on Canon’s 2017 outlook. Just six months ago, they saw operating profit topping 300 billion yen next year, up substantially from the company’s 235 billion yen forecast for this year. But most recently, the consensus estimate has slid to 240 billion yen amid a tough environment for the company’s mainstay multifunction copiers and digital cameras. 

Read the report at Nikkei Asian Review….

We may soon see Canon lenses with mounts on both ends. Such a lens could easily be “reverse mounted” on a DSLR, something you usually do with adapters. By reverse mounting a lens you get a strong macro lens.

However, when using reverse mount adapters, you loose all connectivity and hence all electronic settings like AF or automatic aperture and exposure settings are not working. Canon’s patent shows a lens with electric contacts on both ends and that can be mounted in two ways. One lens could thus be used as standard lens and as a very powerful macro lens. Pretty cool, I think. Really hope this patent goes into production soon.

• Patent publication number 2016-206568
  • Release date 2016.12.8
  • Application date 2015.4.28
• Canon patent
  • Reversibly attachable lenses
  • Reverse attachment detection switch
  • Switch control according to installation position

An interchangeable lens switching the aforementioned lens control information according to a place of contact which had the lens control information according to a place of contact attached to two or more places at a camera in a lens which has contact with a camera, and was attached to a camera.
[Claim 2] A camera system switching the aforementioned lens control information according to a place of contact which had the lens control information according to a place of contact attached to two or more places at a camera in a lens which has contact with a camera, and was attached to a camera.