Predicting the future is a tricky business, but we called this one right. Today Konica Minolta announced it is exiting the imaging business altogether, no more D-SLRs, no more point-and-shoots, it is even getting out of the photographic paper business. Of course, this would have been old news if you were paying attention to PC Maggers Kyle Monson and Terry Sullivan.  You can read their full story here. This is the lead from their column a few months back:

We've been hearing foreboding tidings out of Japan all week: First Konica Minolta announces pretty serious headcount reductions and product streamlining as a way to combat the huge losses they've been suffering. The word from their latest financial report, issued earlier this week, is that they're "shifting (their) expansion strategy to focus on high-value-added products." In other words, we can probably expect Konica Minolta to phase out low-end consumer cameras and target photo enthusiasts and D-SLR users.

Not bad, guys.

[[Thanks to Ben for the graphic.]]