Nikon is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

[thewayne]

A couple of years ago they did the rather questionable move of unfranchising their independent repair dealers: to get your gear serviced, it had to be sent to a Nikon factory shop. So instead of perhaps having someone within a hundred miles of where you lived that you could drive up to, you had to ship your kit to the east or west coast. I found that worrisome, and I don't shoot Nikon.

Now either their entire production or just their final assembly is moving to Thailand. The article is very short, a summary of an article appearing in the Japanese newspaper Asahi.

Sony ate their lunch as the number two camera maker, it would seem that they may becoming desperate to improve profitability, or to lower their prices to expand their user base. Moving production to Thailand might help, but they had better make sure that their quality is 100% as good as Japanese production!

When I was a teen, for my second camera I worked my butt off and bought a Rollieflex 35mm DSLR. Rollie had everything going for it: German engineering, the best glass, etc. One problem: they'd moved production for this particular line to Singapore and as it turns out, didn't followup on quality control. It was a complete POS and the only time it worked right was when I took it in to get it serviced.

Now, that was 40 years ago, and camera manufacturing and QC is much improved. But if their manufacturing slips, they could easily go the way of Minolta, Olympus, Konica, etc.

I really don't want to see that happen.

https://www.mirrorlessrumors.com/nikon-is-ending-70-years-of-camera-production-in-japan/

Comments

[lovelyangel]

I’m not particularly worried about transfer of all production to Thailand. Nikon has been building most of its cameras there for quite a while. Both of my D810s as well as my D300 were made in Thailand. Quality has been fine. Sendai has been a low-volume production facility – although, admittedly, Nikon’s best products tend to be made there. My fabulous, most expensive lens – the AF-S Nikkor 105mm f/1.4E – was actually made in China. The biggest problem is that the Thailand plant once got shut down during a flood.

A good assessment was written by Thom Hogan: Nikon’s Production Move

The Sendai plant does have a certain cachet, though. I’ll retain some pride that my Nikon Z6 was built there. Only limited production models are built there.