The good news is that Canon Inc still made a profit for the 2nd Quarter of 2009; the bad news: that profit is down 72% compared to the same period last year. The company reported ¥44.9 billion or $467 million operating profit in Q2 2009 from net sales of ¥793 billion ($8.2 billion). Compare that with Q2 2008 figures of ¥160 billion operating profit from net sales of ¥1.1 trillion.
Canon’s top products are still its business machines – computer peripherals, office imaging and business information products – which raked in 61% of the company’s total sales. Cameras – DSLRs and compacts – come in a far second with 31%.
Canon notes that demand for DSLRs like the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and EOS 500D remains strong, the global economic gloom notwithstanding. Overall, however, sales for the cameras segment declined by 20.7% to ¥246.1 billion ($2,563 million) for the quarter and by 22.3% to ¥411.6 billion ($4,288 million) for the first half of the year.
[Source: Canon, PDF 116KB]