Canon Announce Profits up 17% July 27, 2007 08:49 by John Sollars

Finally some good news in the Printer arena. Following hot on the heels of Lexmark's and Xerox reporting poor performance in Q2 in Tokyo Canon Inc. reports on thursday that profit jumped 17 percent in the April-June quarter on hot-selling copiers, printers and digital cameras, as well as a weaker yen.

Canon has been booming in recent quarters thanks to brisk sales of its popular digital cameras, combination printer-copier-fax machines and single-purpose laser printers.

The company is also planning to roll out a new technology in flat TVs called SED, or surface-conduction electron-emitter display, that will bring it head-to-head with companies like Sony.

A weaker yen helped the bottom line by boosting the value of overseas earnings repatriated home. The company said the yen had dropped 4 percent against the dollar since last year and 12 percent against the euro.

Canon's business machines and digital camera operations both posted double-digit sales gains, with business machines booking a 12 percent increase and cameras adding 11 percent.

We really like Canons new range of Pixma printers and Multi-Function devices, the quality of the ink is fabulous and this is great news after a run of depressing financial reports. They have also released a raft of new colour laser printers which look very good value