Wednesday, October 05, 2016

... and then where...?

It's no secret that mobile phones have replaced Point and Shoot cameras.  It's no secret that the market for still cameras is rapidly diminishing.  And it's no secret that consumers will buy whatever appeals to them.

To me it seems Google and Apple are in a race to see who can become king and queen of the consumer imaging market.  This year I've seen Apple iPhone6 imaging ads all over Europe.  When we were in Lisbon I saw a town square filled with tall backlit screens filled with huge enlargements of work made with the mobile device.  Just this week Google announced a new mobile device that DXOMark rates as better than Apple's.  The pace of new product introduction between these two companies reminds me of the days when Canon and Nikon were trying to outcompete one another.

What do the traditional imaging companies try to sell us now that their battle has largely been settled?  Pretty much the same things we've seen for the past decade, or so it appears to me.  The pace of new product introduction has slowed dramatically in recent times.  Other than that, a Canon 5D Mk-whatever is pretty much the same as prior generations.  Even the small companies seem to have slowed their pace of new product introductions.  Sony's APS-C mirrorless product line is very slow to update.  Olympus and Fuji continue to bring incremental improvements to their product offerings.

No one seems able nor willing to keep up with Google and Apple.  There is nothing earth-shattering nor market-attention-grabbing coming from the old companies.  "Sizzle sells" and nobody has the "sizzle" like the two giant electronics network integration social platform foundation companies.

I like what Tony Northrup has to say about the death of the traditional imaging market.  His video seems to accurately describe the present state of things.



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