Canon USA Press Release

LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—The ELPH brand has turned ten and the proud parents at Canon want the world to join in the celebration. Crediting the design team that a decade ago, turned a technologically advanced new camera format into an elegantly-simple style statement, Canon USA Vice President and General Manager of Sales Eliott Peck today announced a series of events that emphasize the fun, fashion, glitz and glamour that the industry-leading ELPH cameras have come to characterize. “We, of course want to share with the public our pride, pleasure and gratitude at this ten-year milestone for the Canon ELPH cameras and now the Canon Digital ELPH cameras,” said Peck. “It is the public embrace of our sleek ELPHs that has given us this phenomenal success and generated worldwide sales of more than 33-million1 cameras since 1996.”

Speaking at a breakfast gathering of consumer and industry press, design and fashion experts and photo and consumer electronics industry professionals at the prestigious Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, Peck recalled the market environment and industry influences that first stimulated five competing camera companies to work together to develop a new camera format called the Advanced Photo System. He went on to recognize the foresight and insights of Canon’s engineers and design pioneers that helped make the little ELPH camera in the stainless steel case the dominant proponent of that format in the days before digital and continue to keep it the digital photo revolution’s leading consumer compact camera.

“Rest assured,” said Peck, “that Canon will never be content with yesterday’s achievements no matter how great that success may be. We will continue to pioneer, to create accessible, new and innovative products, to move forward as a company mindful of our tradition of imaging excellence and in so doing, help move our industry forward as well.”

Peck welcomed guest speaker Sass Brown, professor in the Fashion Design Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, who discussed the impact of the ELPH cameras design on the fashion market over the past decade.

Leading off Canon’s ELPH 10th birthday celebration is a consumer sweepstakes that will bring ten lucky winners and their guests to New York City for a totally VIP concert experience at the renowned “Z100’s Jingle Ball 2006” on December 15, 2006 at Madison Square Garden. In addition to hotel, roundtrip air transportation to New York City, deluxe hotel accommodations and limousine transportation to the show, the winners will also be hosted by one of the concert stars at a pre-event, awarded prime seats for the concert and receive a customized, bejeweled Canon PowerShot Digital ELPH camera created exclusively for the ELPH 10th birthday celebration by the hot design team at NYC Peach.

Concert details and sweepstakes entry information will be available to the public beginning in late October at www.powershot.com.

In honor of the ELPH’s 10th birthday, five additional bejeweled cameras will be auctioned off on January 9th 2007 in Las Vegas to benefit the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). Canon is a longstanding financial sponsor and vocal supporter of NCMEC. Among Canon’s public awareness initiatives for NCMEC is Canon4Kids, a program that emphasizes the need for parents to have up-to-date photos when searching for a missing child.

About Canon U.S.A., Inc.
Canon U.S.A., Inc. delivers consumer, business-to-business, and industrial imaging solutions. The company is listed as one of Fortune’s Most Admired Companies in America and is rated #35 on the BusinessWeek list of “Top 100 Brands.” Its parent company Canon Inc. (NYSE:CAJ) is a top patent holder of technology, ranking second overall in the U.S. in 2005, with global revenues of $31.8 billion. For more information, visit www.usa.canon.com.

1 According to Canon Inc. internal reference.