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Reasons like this is why the Japanese companies are eating sh*t and are VERY interested in pushing for a US-China war just like the western companies. Everythi

Reasons like this is why the Japanese companies are eating sh*t and are VERY interested in pushing for a US-China war just like the western companies. Everything coming out of China is way more customer friendly, usually way cheaper and getting better and better to a point that they are surpassing everything else that exists. If DJI releases a full-frame mirrorless camera with L-mount (which they are going to), Canon, Nikon, Fuji and all these companies with firmware from the 90s will die and I am not going to miss them. They have made absolutely no effort to provide any value and a whole lot of tacit collusion is going on. They still sell you SD cards instead of including an SSD which would be MUCH cheaper and faster. Same with battery technology. Compatibility, apps, software... everything.

strogonoff 2y ago
Regarding products from China being cheaper: remember that Japanese, Korean, and Western companies are the ones mostly innovating and absorbing the R&D costs. Remember how modern OLEDs were made feasible basically by LG and Samsung? Having stolen that IP[0][1][2], without any R&D costs but with dirt cheap manufacturing due to direct and indirect subsidies like relatively almost nonexistent labour protection laws, PRC companies could of course immediately flood the market with cheaper alternatives. You can choose your suppliers by other measures than merely price. Arguably, you should if the market you are particupating in is not free and fair in this way. Personally, as a happy owner of a Japanese-made under-$2k camera that works perfectly well for all purposes and even has official CAD files published for accessory 3D printing enthusiasts, I see no reason to switch to a Chinese brand (well, also there is no product that beats it on both specs and price, but even if there was I would think twice). People tend to over-generalize, but reality is not as simple as “all manufacturers from %country1% are better because X and all manufacturers from %country2% suffer from issue Y”. [0] https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.amp.asp?newsIdx=113957 https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.amp.asp?newsIdx=113... [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/south-korea-indicts-group-for-leaking-samsung-display-tech-to-chinese-firm-idUSKCN1NY17H/ https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/south-korea-indic... [2] https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2024-07-19/business/tech/Former-Samsung-engineer-sent-to-prison-for-leaking-OLED-tech-to-China/2094354 https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2024-07-19/busines...
- adrian_b 2y ago
  What you say about innovation has been true mostly in the distant past and mostly for technologies that are used in business-to-business products. For consumer products from recent years, like smartphones or computers, the vast majority of innovative products are Chinese, even if the quality or documentation is frequently subpar. Now I see very frequently cases when US companies or Japanese companies should better start to copy the Chinese if they want to stay competitive, but instead of doing that, they push for the same kind of tariff protections for which the US heavily criticized any other country in the past and blackmailed them in various ways to force them to remove the tariff protections against US companies.
  - strogonoff 2y ago
    In the OLED example people were indicted in 2018 and went to prison in 2023 or 2024. You are making it seem like it’s an old story, but it’s not really true.
  - josephg 2y ago
    I think it goes both ways for sure. My Sony mirrorless camera is incredible - and there's been lots of R&D work over decades that have made my camera possible. But I got a DJI Ronin (handheld gimbal) the other day. Its a gamechanger. With the camera mounted on the gimbal, I can do handheld shots that you could easily use in a blockbuster movie. The only downside is that the whole thing (camera + gimbal) is a very awkward package. The weight is in the wrong place. And that means the gimbal needs to be bigger and bulkier to compensate - which in turn makes it even more awkward to use. You could make a much better product by integrating the gimbal and camera. Put just the lens and sensor on the gimbal, but move the screen, battery and CPU to the "outside" package. Then you could shrink the gimbal itself and remove all the mounting hardware and manual weight adjustment sliders. Apparently DJI has started making $10k cinema cameras along exactly these lines. I really hope the Japanese camera brands take notice. From a product standpoint, its a big deal - and I'm sure it won't be long before DJI makes much cheaper video cameras that start seriously eating Sony & Canon's market share.
- tempo23058 2y ago
PetitPrince 2y ago
> They still sell you SD cards instead of including an SSD which would be MUCH cheaper and faster. I don't think the power draw of an SSD plays well with the current battery tech. Plus most user value the fact that you can rapidly swap those thing. The last thing you want to do during a wedding is having to wait for the data to transfer and/or the battery to recharge.

strogonoff 2y ago

Regarding products from China being cheaper: remember that Japanese, Korean, and Western companies are the ones mostly innovating and absorbing the R&D costs. Remember how modern OLEDs were made feasible basically by LG and Samsung? Having stolen that IP[0][1][2], without any R&D costs but with dirt cheap manufacturing due to direct and indirect subsidies like relatively almost nonexistent labour protection laws, PRC companies could of course immediately flood the market with cheaper alternatives. You can choose your suppliers by other measures than merely price. Arguably, you should if the market you are particupating in is not free and fair in this way. Personally, as a happy owner of a Japanese-made under-$2k camera that works perfectly well for all purposes and even has official CAD files published for accessory 3D printing enthusiasts, I see no reason to switch to a Chinese brand (well, also there is no product that beats it on both specs and price, but even if there was I would think twice). People tend to over-generalize, but reality is not as simple as “all manufacturers from %country1% are better because X and all manufacturers from %country2% suffer from issue Y”. [0] https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.amp.asp?newsIdx=113957 https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.amp.asp?newsIdx=113... [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/south-korea-indicts-group-for-leaking-samsung-display-tech-to-chinese-firm-idUSKCN1NY17H/ https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/south-korea-indic... [2] https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2024-07-19/business/tech/Former-Samsung-engineer-sent-to-prison-for-leaking-OLED-tech-to-China/2094354 https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2024-07-19/busines...

adrian_b 2y ago
What you say about innovation has been true mostly in the distant past and mostly for technologies that are used in business-to-business products. For consumer products from recent years, like smartphones or computers, the vast majority of innovative products are Chinese, even if the quality or documentation is frequently subpar. Now I see very frequently cases when US companies or Japanese companies should better start to copy the Chinese if they want to stay competitive, but instead of doing that, they push for the same kind of tariff protections for which the US heavily criticized any other country in the past and blackmailed them in various ways to force them to remove the tariff protections against US companies.
- strogonoff 2y ago
  In the OLED example people were indicted in 2018 and went to prison in 2023 or 2024. You are making it seem like it’s an old story, but it’s not really true.
- josephg 2y ago
  I think it goes both ways for sure. My Sony mirrorless camera is incredible - and there's been lots of R&D work over decades that have made my camera possible. But I got a DJI Ronin (handheld gimbal) the other day. Its a gamechanger. With the camera mounted on the gimbal, I can do handheld shots that you could easily use in a blockbuster movie. The only downside is that the whole thing (camera + gimbal) is a very awkward package. The weight is in the wrong place. And that means the gimbal needs to be bigger and bulkier to compensate - which in turn makes it even more awkward to use. You could make a much better product by integrating the gimbal and camera. Put just the lens and sensor on the gimbal, but move the screen, battery and CPU to the "outside" package. Then you could shrink the gimbal itself and remove all the mounting hardware and manual weight adjustment sliders. Apparently DJI has started making $10k cinema cameras along exactly these lines. I really hope the Japanese camera brands take notice. From a product standpoint, its a big deal - and I'm sure it won't be long before DJI makes much cheaper video cameras that start seriously eating Sony & Canon's market share.
tempo23058 2y ago

PetitPrince 2y ago

> They still sell you SD cards instead of including an SSD which would be MUCH cheaper and faster. I don't think the power draw of an SSD plays well with the current battery tech. Plus most user value the fact that you can rapidly swap those thing. The last thing you want to do during a wedding is having to wait for the data to transfer and/or the battery to recharge.