AFP, Frankfurt :
Leica, the top-of-the-range camera maker, clocked up record sales last year, its chief revealed in a newspaper interview Tuesday ahead of the expected unveiling of a new smartphone built in collaboration with China’s Huawei group.
“We are pleased to announce that we booked record sales of more than 365 million euros ($415 million),” chief executive Oliver Kaltner told the business daily Handelsblatt in an interview.
“That represents an increase of 12 percent over the previous year. In view of the transformations our industry is currently undergoing, that’s remarkable for a medium-sized company such as Leica,” he said.
Leica’s reputation dates back to the pioneers of photo-journalism Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
The firm, with its trademark red-button logo, has undergone a difficult period over the last decade after being slow to catch on to digital photography and also in the face of ferocious competition from Asian rivals.
Bought in 2005 by Austrian entrepreneur Andreas Kaufmann, the investment fund Blackstone acquired a stake in 2011.
And Leica is “the only company of our size” in the sector which is still headquartered in Europe, Kaufmann said.
“All other camera makers are based in Asia.”
But Leica has succeeded in rejuvenating its brand without losing its luxury image.
After collaborating with Japan’s Panasonic, Leica announced at the end of February a partnership with China’s Huawei.
The partners are shortly to reveal a joint smartphone.
“Lots of companies, including mobile phone and computer makers, enquired” about possible cooperations, Kaufmann said.
“But no-one else aside from Huawei recognised and acknowledged Leica’s technical expertise and is also bringing lots of know-how with it, too,” he said.
Huawei has rapidly emerged as the world’s third-biggest maker of mobile phones after Samsung and Apple and is targeting the high-end market.
