In the past, Canon has been offering a similar body and features (they won't offer 24mp), but at a lower price. That is what entry level buyers go for, they use the green box setting in most cases anyway, so fancy specifications are ignored.
With Canon's recent higher than Nikon priced entries, I'm wondering if they will still be undercutting Nikon prices. If they don't, business will flow the other way.
Too right - the new Nikon appears to be a higher mp version of the 550D. Disagree that entry level users are all green boxers though. The reason I use a 550D is that it fits my budget.
Indeed, there are users like you that buy a camera and know what they are doing.
Just hang asround a big box store like Best Buy, where the major quantities of these are sold and listen to customer after customer asking the best buy camera expert what they need to upgrade from their point and shoot, and then going for the lowest price, or going for the name.
I shop a lot at Costco and see the same thing, buyers want one of those cool looking pro models and their images will magically become better
I've bought several from people who did this. They tried their new camera a couple of times and noted the out of focus results (due to depth of field), and put their new DSLR back in the closet and kept on with the point and shoot that gave then sharp images. Then after a year or two they sell it for a big loss.