As you know Olympus officially stated that they are seeking for a “friendly investor to make a minority investment and help revive its business after a $1.7 billion accounting scandal erupted in October“. And according to sources from Reuters: “South Korea’s Samsung Electronics is open to forging an alliance with Japan’s troubled Olympus CorpSouth Korea’s Samsung Electronics is open to forging an alliance with Japan’s troubled Olympus Corp“. Also the “Private equity firm TPG Capital is willing to invest about $1 billion in Japan’s” (Source: Reuters).
Samsung expressly said that they don’t want to acquire Olympus but build a partnership with it. This to me sounds not bad at all. It would allow Olympus to remain independent and to gain potentially terrific partner. Samsung can deliver OLED and Viewfinder technology, sensor fabrication and more. And Samsung is desperately in need to revive their camera business! NX sales are terrible bad and they even had to delay the NX20 (there was price drop) launch to avoid another flop. Samsung could join the m43 coalition with Olympus, and probably develop new (fullframe?) systems for the future. What do you think?
P.S.: I think Samsung cameras are not that bad and the lins lineup is quite good. See the full NX stuff here: [shopcountry 28258].