Fujifilm to take back "discontinuation" of Single 8 films
Fujifilm previously announced discontinuation of Fujichrome R25N and Fujichrome RT200N in March 2007, and discontinuation of processing services in September 2008. However, in response to strong requests from a Japanese 8mm user group, as of 10 January 2007, they took back that announcement and "deferred" the future discontinuation dates. They estimate a 5-year extension for R25N and 3 years for RT200N. They also request that the users understand the price must increase at this point, since they will have to make new investment in manufacturing and processing equipment for products whose market rapidly shrunk in last years. Based on their published amount of sales and nominal prices, the total *sales* of 8mm films and processing service is about $250k annually, and they can apparently repair their old equipment to continue this business for a few years based on this level of sales. Official announcement (in Japanese): http://fujifilm.jp/information/20070110/ Detailed response by Fuji to the 8mm user group (in Japanese) http://mistral-japan.co.jp/fuji_070110.pdf The user group (http://filmmover.exblog.jp/) sent in two requests for continued services. In the requests, they also requested to maintain the current pricing and even extending product range by offering reversal films and motion picture negative films in 8mm size. One request was regarding designing and offering for sale a new 8mm camera. Many of these requests are commercially not viable, of course, but Fuji's response at least contained their good thoughts about the possibility of packaging existing reversal films in 8mm format after production of dedicated 8mm films becomes inviable.
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