Nikon Corp, a maker of digital cameras and chip-manufacturing equipment, said sales of both product lines may slump if the US economy slows because of last week's terrorist attacks.
The attacks have "thrown cold water on already cooling US consumer confidence," said spokesman Yasuhiro Katagiri. Nikon derives 30 percent of its sales from North America. The attacks came a week after Nikon already had cut its profit forecast for the year ending in March.
Nikon joins a growing number of Japanese companies, from Honda Motor Co to computer maker Fujitsu Ltd, that have warned their business may be hurt by the attacks.
Nikon's immediate concern is that US consumers will buy fewer digital cameras, Katagiri said. Nikon is pushing for a 10 percent share of the world market and earlier this month boosted its projected sales for the year by 80,000 cameras to 1.36 million, double last year's figure.
Nikon is also the largest maker of steppers, used to etch circuitry on semiconductor chips. It fears the attacks have dimmed prospects for a recovery in the chip industry next year, Katagiri said.
"If US consumer confidence weakens, companies will cut capital investment, hurting demand for steppers," he said. Nikon had expected the semiconductor slump to bottom out in the second half of the fiscal year ending March 31.
Nikon said on Sept. 3 it probably won't earn a profit this year because of weaker stepper sales. It earlier had forecast group net income of ?10 billion.
Steppers are expected to account for 41 percent of Nikon's estimated group sales of ?460 billion (US$3.9 billion) this year, and cameras 43 percent. The company previously expected group sales of ?510 billion.
Orders for Japanese-made equipment used to produce microchips have fallen for seven straight months, the Semiconductor Association of Japan said on Monday. Worldwide orders fell 72 percent in July, the latest month surveyed, from the year-earlier month.
"We were expecting semiconductor-related demand to bottom out in the October-December quarter," said Sadaharu Nagumo, who manages about ?15 billion at Japan Investment Trust Management Co. "However, after the US attack, that may come later." Nikon expects to ship 250 integrated-circuit steppers in the fiscal year, about 40 percent of which are headed for US customers such as Intel Corp.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS