Nikon has said it is looking to create a product that will change the concept of cameras in a hope that such a device will replace declining point and shoot camera sales.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Makoto Kimura, President of Nikon told the news agency: "We want to create a product that will change the concept of cameras. It could be a non-camera consumer product."
According to Bloomberg, the president declined to say if the company was developing a mobile phone.
"Rapid expansion of mobile devices is a change in business environment given to us," Kimura said. "Our task going forward is to find an answer to that change."
Kimura is right. While the company's popular DSLR business is still continuing to perform, its point and shoot division is starting to feel the heat from an ever improving, and growing, smartphone market.
Point-and-shoot camera sales across the industry dropped by around a quarter in April and May from a year earlier while smartphone shipments jumped 46 per cent last year to over 722 million units.
Nikon's cause isn't helped by moves in recent months from companies like Samsung, Nokia, and HTC to focus PR and marketing efforts on the phone's camera capabilities rather than its ability to just make calls and surf the internet.
Samsung has even gone as far as to launch a range of cameras with Android as the main operating system.
Nikon has already dabbled with an Android-powered camera, the Nikon Coolpix S800c, but it sounds like Kimura has bigger plans for the company other than just bolting on a mobile phone option for sharing to the company's camera ranges.
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