Canon has warned that its products will get more expensive. In a Q&A after its third-quarter 2026 results, the company said it expects to pay more for scarce components and intends to recover that through price increases from next year.
The warning comes as memory prices have been pushed up by demand from AI data centres, which has made flash memory, SSDs and memory cards more expensive. Every digital camera needs memory, so makers have little room to design around it.
What Canon told investors
According to Digital Camera Life, Canon said in a Q&A session that its printing and imaging businesses both face component shortages. Its answer was that it is using “every possible means” to secure supply for next year, expects higher procurement costs as a result, and “our policy is to offset those increases through price increases from next year onward,” noted Peta Pixel.
Canon added that it has already been adjusting prices as costs arrive, and that it weighs each increase against the effect on sales volumes. It does not expect memory and raw material prices to fall in 2027.
Canon expects its imaging division to earn a visibly smaller profit margin in the final quarter of the year. It puts that down mainly to pricier memory and to higher costs tied to the Middle East conflict. It said it has not yet been able to fully pass those costs on, and that if they persist next year it will absorb them through price increases.
Not only Canon
PetaPixel notes that Fujifilm raised the issue of rising raw material costs in August, that Nikon has talked of higher costs from memory prices, and that Sony blamed memory costs for weaker imaging earnings. Canon may be the most open so far about the consequence for buyers.
Canon has not named any cameras or markets, or given percentages. Photographers planning a body or lens purchase for early 2027 may want to watch for price announcements in the new year. Canon has already been raising some prices as its costs arrive, so a hike on existing models is not a distant prospect.
Memory cards and SSDs have been getting dearer for the same reason, which means the total cost of a new camera setup, with storage included, could climb on more than one front.
