The Week of Strange News

LEDE ONSometimes a week goes by without any interesting or significant camera product announcements, but in which there turned out to be lots of photography-adjacent news. Last week was one of those weeks. Even Apple is now actively reporting supply chain constraints and pricing impacts for future products. Smaller players—which includes all of the camera makers—will have bigger issues. Without further ado: —————————— CommentarySony Makes Buyout Offer for TamronI was just about to write a longer article about consolidation when Tamron’s acknowledgement that Sony had made a buyout offer for Tamron hit the news wires. This appears to be related to the fact that Tamron recently found itself the target of an aggressive overseas investment firm (Effissimo Capital Management, based in Singapore), which has now managed to gobble up over 17% of Tamron’s stock. It’s a long, complex story, but Japanese companies generally regroup when under foreign ownership attack. Sony, which has the second…