Who doesn’t know about Canon? A company that changed the photography field forever, and it continues to transform it into a paracosm, which feels more real than our imagination. Canon has been around for so long, and it’s hard to look back and grasp how a Japanese optical laboratory turned into a billion-dollar empire.

Today, Canon is considered a global leader in imaging products such as cameras, lenses, semiconductors, printers, scanners, and much more. Canon’s history dates back to 1933, and it all started when Takeshi Mitarai, Goro Yoshida, Takeo Maeda, and Saburo Uchida began to an optical company named Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory. After 83 years, the company stands at an annual sales of 3.6 trillion Japanese Yen, or 32.7 billion USD. Let’s see how this company started its road to success and what contributed to its overwhelming triumph in the world.

A brief history about Canon

In 1933, Takeshi Mitarai, Goro Yoshida, Takeo Maeda, and Saburo Uchida founded the Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory to learn and research about cameras and lenses. Their headquarters was based in Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan and these four individuals started experimenting with cameras while taking inspiration from Leica. This German company specializes in manufacturing lenses, cameras, and sniper scopes.

In 1934, after one year of founding the Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory, Takeshi Mitarai introduced Japan’s first 35 mm focal-plane-shutter camera, which was a prototype at that time. The next year, Canon marked the trademark for “Canon” and launched a new 35 mm focal-plane-shutter camera called The Hansa Canon.

In the next five decades, Canon introduced hundreds of new products that included a Rangefinder camera called Canon 7, ‘Canola 130’, a ten-key calculator, Canon Pellix(a manual focus camera), and many more awesome technologies.

Between 1960-1970, Canon established multiple offices in Japan and the USA. In the mid-60s, Canon was mass-producing 8 mm movie cameras and lenses. Shipping was also going strong as Canon was able to ship their products to thousands of people all over the world.

As Canon was succeeding with their cameras, other competitors were going strong too, and the market quickly became volatile with multiple companies selling cameras and lenses in Japan. However, Canon already planned the future ahead of its competition and moved into other sectors, the ones that changed Canon forever.

In 1971, Canon introduced the first Canon AE-1, which was the first micro-computer embedded camera of that time. In the meantime, the Canon hardware manufacturing team was working on printers and scanners. And in 1985, Canon launched its line of Inkjet printers, which worked on the bubble-jet technology.

Canon worked behind the scene without infiltrating the printer market and supplied print engines for the world’s top-tier printer companies. At that time, companies like HP and Apple used Canon’s LBP-CX engines to run their printers.

After dominating the camera market, Canon finally moved into the printer manufacturing sector and mass-produced industry-level printers for factories. In 1990, Canon launched the BJ-10v, a notebook-sized inkjet printer that easily plunked down inside a backpack.

How did Canon manage to sell printers in the late 90s?

After expanding the manufacturing units globally, Canon moved into the printer market and introduced the first color inkjet printer, BJC-820, and started mass exporting its printer line in 1992. At the same time, Canon introduced the NP6030 copying machine and shipped it to hundreds of countries.

In 1995, Canon introduced its first full-color copying machine, CLC1000, with photosensitivity drums that could copy at a breakneck speed. In the next few years, Canon continued manufacturing SLR cameras in the 90s while moving its manufacturing units in the Asian countries.

In the early 2000s, Canon mass-produced the LBP-2810/2710 color laser printer with its home-bred Four-Color Vertical In-Line Engine. In the following year, Canon manufactured hundreds of printer models and sold them across the world.

Users like the ease of inkjet printers and how cheap & affordable they were. As a result, Canon gained considerable market capital for cheap and affordable printers, competing with the likes of HP, Epson, Brother, Kyocera, and Samsung.

Due to the compact size and affordability of these printers, customers loved Canon, and worldwide offices purchased them in bulk.

In the next decade, smart printers became a thing, and Canon introduced the first big commercial photo printer, DreamLabo 5000, the expensive printer of that time, which comes at an approximate price of 607k.

Final thoughts
Canon is the world leader in imaging products like cameras, lenses, and photo equipment technology. It’s so inspiring to see how a group of friends started their journey with producing focal-plane-shutter cameras to manufacturing everything techy. With a history of over 80 years in the making, Canon has surpassed every expectation and proved its worth in the world’s professional electronic market.

https://letslistbusiness.com/blog/HowCanonMovedFromCamerasToPrinters