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Canon China CEO: More color for life and work
From left: Canon China CEO Howard Ozawa, former State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan, Canon Chairman Fujio Mitarai and Hong Kong movie star Jackie Chan at the opening ceremony for the fair.
Photography enthusiasts are flocking to the Canon Grand Fair that opened yesterday in Beijing. The event will next travel to Chengdu and Guangzhou. Photos Provided to China Daily
Cameras, copiers, printers and high-definition movies
The gray skyscrapers of the city often look the same. Inside, white-collar workers in black suits are busy with the hustle-and-bustle world – many would say it is a world of little color.
But Canon believes "a colorful world gives people upward power to achieve and make change" as illustrated in its so-called Color Strategy.
Howard Ozawa, president and CEO of Canon China, said many Chinese customers are only familiar with Canon’s cameras, but the company has a rich portfolio that also includes printers and copy machines.
"Canon aims to cater to demand for color with all its lineup to achieve all-round growth in China," said Ozawa. He noted China’s market for color equipment offers high growth potential. Color copiers have less than 10 percent of the country’s copier market, but in Europe and the US the penetration rate is more than 50 percent.
"We hope when people think of color, they will immediately relate to Canon," he said.
Canon has been in China for 15 years. But before the country joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, the company was "sleeping," said Ozawa.
Rapid expansion started in 2005, with the company’s scale and revenue growing at an annual rate of 30 percent in the years since.
The CEO told China Daily that Canon will continue to see 30 percent yearly growth even as China’s economy cools.
His confidence comes from the company’s top-notch color and picture-solution technologies that will be shown at the Canon Grand Fair from Sept 6 to 9.
In addition to exhibitions of its latest products, the company will offer a combination of technology and fun.
One example is its MR – or mixed reality – technology. Visitors can dance with a dinosaur seen through a head-mounted display, though passers-by might wonder why a person is dancing strangely alone – they see no dinosaur.
Visitors to the fair can also watch ultra-high definition films in a special theater using Canon’s Cinema EOS System.
The fair also exhibits compelling pictures of the life and culture of China’s ethnic groups as part of the company’s social responsibility efforts to protect their intangible cultural heritage.
Ozawa said Canon also supports 100 primary schools in China and 26 in other parts of Asia to communicate via pictures.
"Such kind of communication can reach their hearts without understanding a foreign language. The approach will broaden their vision and affect their ideas of life," he said.
But despite the progress, Ozawa still said that he’s not that satisfied with Canon’s business in China.
"If I compared Canon to a human-being, we are only a primary student at the current stage."
He said the dissatisfaction comes from the status of Canon’s office equipment and medical application businesses.
But he added that he hopes China will become Canon’s largest market globally, both in revenue and company scale, by the year 2020.
Ozawa made his comments on a nice autumn afternoon in Beijing as he sat in front of a French window on the 15th floor of Canon’s headquarters building. He was wearing a red tie, part of the company’s ongoing "Passion Monday" campaign that asks male staff members to wear red ties and females to don red accessories.
Indeed the kind of color is what Ozawa and other Canon employees advocate.
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