Reuters Japan is quoting Fujifilm's camera division head Takeshi Higuchi as saying that they aim to be the world's fourth largest camera maker by next March and number three a year later.
To put that in perspective, Fujifilm is by many counts number eight today and is outsold by number three Nikon by 2.5x at retail. To fulfill Higuchi's promise, he'll need to sell 10 million more cameras in 2013 than customers are buying today (or hope that Nikon just completely self destructs). Of course, Fujifilm doesn't count themselves as number eight, they claim they're number five in camera sales with 11 million units sold. I suspect "sold" means "distributed to subsidiaries" though, as actual cash register receipts have never showed Fujifilm that high in recent times. Unfortunately, it's difficult to tell the exact numbers, because Fujifilm in particular has shifted a lot of its sales efforts to places like India, where sales monitoring isn't so hot.
It seems like we get one of these "we'll be number X with Y market share" statements every six months or so from one of the camera companies, and we've gotten them for years and years now. To my knowledge, not a single one has proven true yet.
I fail to see the purpose of such comments. If they reflect a renewed investment in product development, increased production, shameful self-promotion, or even a potential technology breakthrough, all they're doing is putting competitors on notice. If they're trying to prop up stock, it doesn't work. If they're setting divisional goals publicly, well, that has not appeared to help achieve the goal in the past.
I actually think it's mostly the latter that's involved, though. By having the head of your camera division announce these "reach goals" it's mostly a rallying cry to the troops. In essence, a public statement of confidence by the chief executive.
More interesting were other comments by Higuchi: that Fujifilm may re-enter the interchangeable lens camera market. Quite a few of us have been waiting for Fujifilm to do that, with an m4/3 entry that has a built-in EVF. The product has been prototyped and tested. The question is whether it would be built and sold. It's looking more and more like it will.
Another eye-raising statement was the apparent disinterest in increasing production in China. Fujifilm made a big fuss about moving production (of everything at the time; the recent X100 is made again in Japan) to China a few years ago. Now it appears they're looking to move that production out of China to somewhere else in Southeast Asia. That was quick.