General Imaging

The GE X5 with GE logo on lens cap image by Paulo José Silva Ferraz (Image rights)

General Imaging launched its business in 2007 by acquiring the right to distribute its digital cameras under the brand name GE of General Electric. In spring 2007 it already presented a product line at the PMA. Founders were Hiroshi “Hugh” Komiya, a former sales and marketing manager of Olympus, Takeyoshi Kawano, product design expert who had worked for Olympus, Sony and Panasonic (Walkman, Betamax VCR, VAIO PC, Olympus µ), and Rene Buhay, former sales and marketing manager of Samsung and Ricoh. Some early products of the company were performing so awfully that the company tried a new strategy, trying to get a foot on the market with lowest-price bridge cameras like the GE X5 on the one hand and fully automatic designer cameras on the other. The design revolution backwards are fully automatic CREATE cameras with just internal memory and a "Create by Jason Wu" design (Jason Wu didn't design but participated in planning the design).

Links

• Company website
• Photoscala article German
• Test of the G1 on imaging-resource.com cit.: "... the GE G1 looks a whole lot better than it works ... the GE G1 takes image quality to new lows ..."
• Test of the A830 on digitalcamerainfo.com cit: "... looks more like a refrigerator ... worst movie mode ever seen on a digital camera ... it doesn’t even take good pictures ..."
• photoscala PMA 2010 report cit.: "surprisingly General Imaging still exists"