This Week in Canon

- Canon announced more management changes. Tod Pike, who was in charge of the wholesale side of the office equipment division, and then of Canadian operations, was named President of Canon Business Solutions, which is the retail, or factory direct branch side of the company. He will report to Joe Adachi, CEO. Under Tod will be Dennis Uhniat, Executive VP. No replacement was named for Tod’s old job.

- In an effort to gain its customers back from IKON (which was acquired by Ricoh), Canon Business Solutions launched the “War Chest” program, giving sales reps ability to pay for up to 9 months of a competitive lease,

- A year after being booted from the program, Canon announced that it is once again part of the U.S. Federal Government GSA contract for copiers. This will allow Canon to again sell to U.S. Federal Government.

- The chairman of Canon, Fujio Mitarai, said on Sunday the company's year-end holiday sales were "disappointing" and expected a difficult 2009 as an economic downturn hits consumer demand:
- "We had very big influence from the deteriorated economic situation. Unfortunately we are not an exception,"
- “(Holiday sale) was disappointing but this is happening all over the world."
- "This year must be the worst year" Mitarai said when asked about the prospects for 2009.

- “Probably the recession will continue in the world for a year or 18 months”
- He added that a recovery could hinge on how the U.S. government could spur up its economy.

- the company said it would delay the construction of a $196 million digital camera plant in Japan due to slow demand.

- Analysts surveyed by Reuters Estimates forecast Canon's net profit would fall to 213 billion yen ($2.36 billion) in 2009 from 359 billion yen estimated for 2008 and 488 billion yen it earned in 2007.

- Canon’s Ryoichi Bamba, when asked about mergers stated; “We had discussions with Nokia….we’ll see”

- Canon is in process of installing a new central computer system, with completion in 2010, at a cost of 20 billion yen
- Canon’s COO, Tsuneji Uchida, when asked about layoff of 1100 workers in Japan stated; “Chinese labor costs are a tenth of those in Japan”

- Canon launched a new wide format color inkjet printer, the iPF5100 that offers 12 ink cartridges (cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, yellow, red, green, blue, black, light black & gray)