6 ms·

As an economist: isn't this 'just' an example of software eating the world? One the one hand, quality camera's should keep upgrading the periferal hardware to

by wjnc 9y ago

As an economist: isn't this 'just' an example of software eating the world? One the one hand, quality camera's should keep upgrading the periferal hardware to keep match with modern IT-supplies and on the other hand keep a focus on durable products. Why wouldn't producers do this? Cost savings and probably price competition. The competition (smart phones) have a whole different market. They have a product that people (regretably?) replace every 2-3 years. The market dictates the newest techniques. Pictures are sensors + software. Software has a much shorter improvement cycle. Hence, I would expect a continuously larger part of the camera market to 'fall' for the smartphone camera. Heck, the 'official' advice from my preferred reviewers is not to buy a small camera anymore, but use the savings for a better smartphone. And then you have large old-camera corporations struggling because their highest margin products (just a guess that that was the little cameras in the former days, not the professionaly product) are falling away. So they don't have the money to keep their high-end products up quality wise nor the institutional awareness to quickly adapt. Cycle a few times... Read OP.

ekianjo 9y ago
> The competition (smart phones) have a whole different market. They have a product that people (regretably?) replace every 2-3 years. The market dictates the newest techniques. Pictures are sensors + software. Software has a much shorter improvement cycle. Hence, I would expect a continuously larger part of the camera market to 'fall' for the smartphone camera. Heck, the 'official' advice from my preferred reviewers is not to buy a small camera anymore, but use the savings for a better smartphone. The old corporations in the field (Canon, Nikon, Sony) should make you pay for better firmwares (i.e. plugins or at least revisions) so that they have an incentive to keep improving their existing DLSRs. I think on my previous body there was only ONE update in x years and that did not bring anything new on the table. Thanksfully nowadays we have MagicLantern for Canon DSLRs at least, which brings a ton of additional features for photo and video. It's still not at a parity level with the software available on phones and the like, but it's a big jump vs the base firmware nonetheless.
- wjnc 9y ago
  Good point. That would be a camera as a platform-model. We're half-way there in re-assembling a market structure that can withstand the 'new' pressures. The only way for a truely decent product, would be a decoupling of 1. camera as high quality parts for making great pictures, 2. camera as a communications device, 3. software. Alas, I can think of exactly no digital examples of that market structure to work. Perhaps the old-school PC hit that mark. How many of those are still around? Perhaps we can see cloud computing as hitting that mark (separating 1,2,3), but still we need a complete device (1+2+3) to interact with the cloud.
- trm42 9y ago
  At least Fuji and Olympus have realised the new model cycle is getting longer so they are releasing new firmware features until the replacing model is launched. Canikon aren't doing new features in firmwares, seems more like bug fixes and Sony is somewhere inbetween at least with the A7-series... Sony A7 series have also some kind of small apps you can buy and download from their store to your camera. Haven't seen that many apps there =(
  - barretts 9y ago
    Finding, downloading, and using those apps is a whole exercise in pain tolerance. Took me an hour-plus to download the timelapse app.
    - nogridbag 9y ago
      >> Took me an hour-plus to download the timelapse app. Oh wow. I had the same experience. In my case I just wanted to update the existing apps I had installed. Apparently you need a Sony entertainment account to install apps (it must be a new requirement as I never had one when I installed the apps in the first place). I tried for 15 minutes to create an account using the camera. * My A6000 doesn't have a touch screen so I had to use the camera's wheels to operate the on-screen keyboard * The account creation page is non-responsive. You would think Sony Entertainment Network's account login/creation webpage would be responsive so it would be usable within the camera OR there would be a completely different page. NO, it is the same desktop, non-responsive page including Google's painful anti-bot script which requires me to select 10 images that represent street signs using the camera wheel. Amazingly, I could actually use the A6000 to create an account, but it kept erroring out when submitting. Finally, I realized it would be easier to just use my laptop and to my surprise it still failed because their account creation was down. About 10 attempts later it still failed with a slightly different error, but I still received the account creation success email (?) and was able to login fine after that. Edit: Formatting.
tpeo 9y ago
Why would they try to compete with smartphones? Dropping product differentiation when the competition comes from "a whole different market" doesn't really make sense. This seems more like an issue of quality control.
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  They're not choosing to compete with smartphones - smartphones are eating into their market thus forcing competition. As smartphone cameras have improved the more they've eaten into the market. Note that this argument does not require that all users of their cameras would ever consider using a smartphone instead.
  - wjnc 9y ago
    Indeed. 'Big corp' would find it very hard to react when a profitable segment of their portfolio drops out (smartphone vs. simple camera / so you're struggling financially), while competition or complexity ramps up in another part of their portfolio (high end camera / I figure a new market structure is needed, but never before tried out). Snarky: It's just not thaught that way in business schools. Lookup Nikons financial trouble. Canon has no financial trouble, but seems to be quickly moving to other markets that are profitable (medical supplies). So perhaps they will just drop out of this market in a few years.
  - tpeo 9y ago
    What market? Smartphones and high end cameras aren't really comparable. They compete in the sense that they're both able to take pictures, but they don't compete across all possible dimensions. I mean, I could be wrong, but these don't look like substitute goods. Smartphones and crappy cameras certainly are, but not not smartphones and high-end cameras. But using cheaper parts does make cameras crappier, so doing so in order to engage in price competition is choosing to compete with smartphones. Which is what I don't understand. Because, as far as I know, firms should engage in product differentiation as long as it's possible.
    - noselasd 9y ago

by wjnc 9y ago

ekianjo 9y ago

> The competition (smart phones) have a whole different market. They have a product that people (regretably?) replace every 2-3 years. The market dictates the newest techniques. Pictures are sensors + software. Software has a much shorter improvement cycle. Hence, I would expect a continuously larger part of the camera market to 'fall' for the smartphone camera. Heck, the 'official' advice from my preferred reviewers is not to buy a small camera anymore, but use the savings for a better smartphone. The old corporations in the field (Canon, Nikon, Sony) should make you pay for better firmwares (i.e. plugins or at least revisions) so that they have an incentive to keep improving their existing DLSRs. I think on my previous body there was only ONE update in x years and that did not bring anything new on the table. Thanksfully nowadays we have MagicLantern for Canon DSLRs at least, which brings a ton of additional features for photo and video. It's still not at a parity level with the software available on phones and the like, but it's a big jump vs the base firmware nonetheless.

wjnc 9y ago
Good point. That would be a camera as a platform-model. We're half-way there in re-assembling a market structure that can withstand the 'new' pressures. The only way for a truely decent product, would be a decoupling of 1. camera as high quality parts for making great pictures, 2. camera as a communications device, 3. software. Alas, I can think of exactly no digital examples of that market structure to work. Perhaps the old-school PC hit that mark. How many of those are still around? Perhaps we can see cloud computing as hitting that mark (separating 1,2,3), but still we need a complete device (1+2+3) to interact with the cloud.
trm42 9y ago
At least Fuji and Olympus have realised the new model cycle is getting longer so they are releasing new firmware features until the replacing model is launched. Canikon aren't doing new features in firmwares, seems more like bug fixes and Sony is somewhere inbetween at least with the A7-series... Sony A7 series have also some kind of small apps you can buy and download from their store to your camera. Haven't seen that many apps there =(
- barretts 9y ago
  Finding, downloading, and using those apps is a whole exercise in pain tolerance. Took me an hour-plus to download the timelapse app.
  - nogridbag 9y ago
    >> Took me an hour-plus to download the timelapse app. Oh wow. I had the same experience. In my case I just wanted to update the existing apps I had installed. Apparently you need a Sony entertainment account to install apps (it must be a new requirement as I never had one when I installed the apps in the first place). I tried for 15 minutes to create an account using the camera. * My A6000 doesn't have a touch screen so I had to use the camera's wheels to operate the on-screen keyboard * The account creation page is non-responsive. You would think Sony Entertainment Network's account login/creation webpage would be responsive so it would be usable within the camera OR there would be a completely different page. NO, it is the same desktop, non-responsive page including Google's painful anti-bot script which requires me to select 10 images that represent street signs using the camera wheel. Amazingly, I could actually use the A6000 to create an account, but it kept erroring out when submitting. Finally, I realized it would be easier to just use my laptop and to my surprise it still failed because their account creation was down. About 10 attempts later it still failed with a slightly different error, but I still received the account creation success email (?) and was able to login fine after that. Edit: Formatting.

tpeo 9y ago

Why would they try to compete with smartphones? Dropping product differentiation when the competition comes from "a whole different market" doesn't really make sense. This seems more like an issue of quality control.

jamesrcole 9y ago
They're not choosing to compete with smartphones - smartphones are eating into their market thus forcing competition. As smartphone cameras have improved the more they've eaten into the market. Note that this argument does not require that all users of their cameras would ever consider using a smartphone instead.
- wjnc 9y ago
  Indeed. 'Big corp' would find it very hard to react when a profitable segment of their portfolio drops out (smartphone vs. simple camera / so you're struggling financially), while competition or complexity ramps up in another part of their portfolio (high end camera / I figure a new market structure is needed, but never before tried out). Snarky: It's just not thaught that way in business schools. Lookup Nikons financial trouble. Canon has no financial trouble, but seems to be quickly moving to other markets that are profitable (medical supplies). So perhaps they will just drop out of this market in a few years.
- tpeo 9y ago
  What market? Smartphones and high end cameras aren't really comparable. They compete in the sense that they're both able to take pictures, but they don't compete across all possible dimensions. I mean, I could be wrong, but these don't look like substitute goods. Smartphones and crappy cameras certainly are, but not not smartphones and high-end cameras. But using cheaper parts does make cameras crappier, so doing so in order to engage in price competition is choosing to compete with smartphones. Which is what I don't understand. Because, as far as I know, firms should engage in product differentiation as long as it's possible.
  - noselasd 9y ago