Japan's leading digital still-camera maker, Casio Computer Co, is farming more production to Taiwanese partners this year in a bid to strengthen its global market position amid booming demand for consumer electronics, a top executive said yesterday.
Global demand for digital cameras is expected to be very strong, driven by massive replacement of traditional film cameras, said Yuji Murakami, a Casio assistant manager, on the sidelines of a product launch in Taipei.
"The growth will be 1.5-fold on the annual basis," Murakami said.
Global shipments are likely to surge to approximately 60 million units this year from 35 million last year, he said.
Casio holds about 3 percent of the worldwide digital camera market at present.
"We aim to take 10 percent of the global market in 2004. We are increasing our partnership with Canon's Taiwan unit," Murakami told the Taipei Times.
However, the orders "will be limited to low-end modes," Murakami said.
He refused to disclose how big the increase will be.
Ability Enterprise Co (
"The jump is mostly because of a significant increase from Casio. In the first three months, about 40 percent of our shipments went to the Japanese company," said Tammy Cheng (
With Casio's help, the Taiwanese digital-camera maker expects sales to increase in the second quarter, Cheng said.
Ability started to make digital cameras for Casio in the middle of last year, according to Cheng.
"Ability is a dark horse in the nation's digital camera sector," said Helen Chen (陳佩君), an analyst with Polaris Securities Co (寶來證券).
The company has nabbed all the series in Casio's digital camera lineup and it very likely will win orders from Eastman Kodak Co, she added.
Ability is expected to earn NT$802 million this year on the revenues of NT$14.78 billion, Chen said.
The company is expected to ship about 3.8 million digital cameras this year, she said.
According to a report by Topo-logy Research Institute (
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