Not my title; that is from the article on Nikon Rumors.
http://nikonrumors.com/2013/08/09/nikons-stock-hit-hard.aspx/
http://nikonrumors.com/2013/08/09/nikons-stock-hit-hard.aspx/
Nikon's Stock Hit Hard
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That is interesting, but the comments that follow are even more interesting. I can't help but notice that they are similar to complaints that I see here. Like "The company doesn't listen to the customers, plus stuff unique to Nikon.
sek
sek
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Its a reflection of the tough financial climate and higher prices. When the average buyer goes to Best Buy for a camera and sees a Canon DSLR like the 60D for much less money than a D7100, guess which they will buy? They are not looking so much at the capabilities as the price. That 60D is nice, looks professional, and its cheaper.
Canon's roots stem from producing good but not the best cameras for low prices. They spend a huge amount of development cost designing a camera / lens to be mass produced at a low target cost. Even when they are forced to slash prices, there is a little profit. Their new plan calls for robotic assembly of all their products. Its hard for me to see how that could be done, but its going to happen in steps over the next several years.
That is bad news for the competition if it works.
Canon's roots stem from producing good but not the best cameras for low prices. They spend a huge amount of development cost designing a camera / lens to be mass produced at a low target cost. Even when they are forced to slash prices, there is a little profit. Their new plan calls for robotic assembly of all their products. Its hard for me to see how that could be done, but its going to happen in steps over the next several years.
That is bad news for the competition if it works.
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Mark D5 TEAM II
Proud N0ink 0wnz0r / crApple iFruitcake H4t3r
And in related news, Nikon rethinks 1 System and cuts 2013 forecast citing poor sales:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/2013/08/08/nikon-cuts-2013-sales-forecast-citing-poor-mirrorless-camera-sales
In short, small-sensored MILCs sUx0rs canal water, and Nikon has seen the light and will put up competitors to the Canon SL1 and similar small DSLRs. Then again, we all should be buying D800s anyway, according to the Gospel of St. DxO, patron saint of Banding-Hunting Band of DR Brothers.
http://www.dpreview.com/news/2013/08/08/nikon-cuts-2013-sales-forecast-citing-poor-mirrorless-camera-sales
In short, small-sensored MILCs sUx0rs canal water, and Nikon has seen the light and will put up competitors to the Canon SL1 and similar small DSLRs. Then again, we all should be buying D800s anyway, according to the Gospel of St. DxO, patron saint of Banding-Hunting Band of DR Brothers.
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Mark D5 TEAM II said:
To be more precise, we should all hope that Nikon and Canon produce cheap dSLRs and the public buys them so that we can afford cameras like the D800 and the 5D3.
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Pi said:
Right now, its working by the law of supply and demand. Supply is high, demand is low, so we see a lot of inventory clearing limited time sales. That allows manufacturers to keep high MSRP's for better times.
Japanese culture frowns on laying off employees, so its often less expensive to keep churning out more products than needed and cutting prices to increase demand. You can also shift production to different products as Nikon is doing, The result is that the most efficient manufacturer is in a good spot to severely cut prices while others suffer.
As far as body prices, they are not the big factor to me, its lens prices. I have 10 X invested in lenses over my bodies. Lens sales are pretty good, so we are not seeing big cuts in high end lenses. The low cost consumer lenses are made in Taiwan, and Canon does not have to worry so much about cutting jobs if sales drop.
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scottkinfw said:
well, as a long time Nikon user recently went dual system I must say negative effects on QC dept on Nikon products are obvious and it is because they are trying very hard to make it as cheap as they can.
they are now going out of Thailand plant and planning to make almost 70 percent of their D-SLRs in Laos.
they should have priced the D800 around 4k , but they managed to make it cheap , with some annoying design flaws.
we had horrible left-side AF issue with our D800E and now dust issue with the D600 and D7100.
the D800 feels much cheaper , plastic and AF is not as reliable as that of the D700.
and there is no real successor to the D700, if there was a proper D700 successor. to be honest , I 'd never bought a couple of Canons.
the D800 is potentially a good camera but for very specific apps such as landscape,in which I am not interested at all, studio , product or location.
so many of us (Nikon users)do not consider it as a proper D700 successor.
but their main problem is wasting too much R and D and marketing money on an entry level cameras such as the One system and D3100, D5200 ,etc.
oh and they should not have wasted too much money on Aston Kutcher.
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Mt Spokane Photography said:
>Japanese culture frowns on laying off employees, so its often less expensive to keep churning out more products than needed and cutting prices to increase demand.
this is very true , I think this is exactly what they did and may still be doing, it seems to me is like intentionally throwing the money.
actually Taiwan is a very developed country already and made in Taiwan is nothing wrong.
but going made in Laos is a big mistake of Nikon.
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Not necessarily. If you have to keep on paying (unemployment) to laid off highly skilled employees even though they are producing nothing, that's a waste of both money and human dignity.MLfan3 said:
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Mt Spokane Photography said:
Which is bad news for us since they will be able to get away with 2005 sensors in 2025 and marketing dribbling out things over 20 years (so far it's been more than 10 years and they still haven't finished dribbling out something as simple, basic, and zero cost as a truly functional AutoISO, certainly not for anything less than 1 series).
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Pi said:
That's exactly right. I've taken heat in the past for this but we should be grateful for the fabulous times in which we live. After film died and a period of expensive, crappy small sensor cameras we now have (relatively) affordable top notch digital gear at hand.
But given the still ongoing digital revolution and the turmoil its causing for some of my favorite things to spend my time (music and photography) we may see more significant changes coming our way - some of which may not work in our favor given how small a market segment we live with for our hobbies/side businesses/even professions.
Canon and Nikon develop and sell professional and semi professional gear mostly as a marketing tool to sell to the huge consumer segment. Problem is that segment is dying in many ways.
So it'll be interesting to see what happens going forward. Mergers? Companies selling off their consumer camera segments? New companies catering to pros only (for a premium price)? The only thing I'm sure about is that things won't stay as they are and we should enjoy things more while they last.
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WARNING: I just re-read my post before posting it, and man does it sound like a long, boring lecture! My intention is just to contribute something thoughtful to the discussion that hopefully makes sense and perhaps spawns further thoughtful discussion, so I'm posting it anyway. 
And with that...
A friend of my brother used to work for Sandisk. He couldn't divulge details about what was in the release pipeline but said that we'd be simply amazed at the tech they had ready for prime time but wouldn't be released for a couple of years. Like Sandisk, any tech company that wants to survive in the long term will do this. You have to have years of new tech in the pipeline to stay competitive.
From a business perspective, there are a number of sound reasons to use this strategy:
[list type=decimal]
[*]Releasing new generations of tech too rapidly can sometimes make people feel like they just wasted their money because something newer and better just came out. If the expensive new gear is suddenly obsolete, you're less likely to shell out next time (or be tempted to keep waiting for another generation, delaying your purchase -- and revenue to the company).
[*]Delaying release of new tech can allow more time to recoup R&D costs, improve production processes and ultimately make products cheaper (how often do we comment about how cheap data storage is these days?).
[*]Reserving technology for future release helps to even out the peaks and valleys of advancements in technology from new research. It may be a year or two (or more) before a new technology makes it from research to prototype to mass manufacturing. By waiting to release on a more regular "upgrade path", it masks the varying rate of new development and helps keep the revenue more steady.
[*]In most cases, a company tries to capture revenue from multiple markets, often stratified by level of income or discretionary spending. By putting all the whistles and bells in one product, lower markets that represent additional revenue would be lost. Hence, inferior but cheaper products are created to satisfy those market segments.
[*]One company can't always predict what technology a competitor will release and when. Having a pipeline of technology in waiting allows the company to respond with something when a competitor advances. In general, market leaders (Canon) can wait and follow a road map, while competitors (Nikon) tend to release new tech more rapidly as they fight for market share (the rapid pace can also bring quality control issues along for the ride).
[/list]
Of course, knowing and understanding all of this doesn't make it any easier to wait for the next generation of tech to be released! I want it "now" just like most other people. ;D This is where competition is good for the consumer -- it can sometimes nudge a company to release things sooner than planned.
One thing to remember is that the actual tech a competitor releases isn't necessarily the driver for a company to release something in response. From a business perspective, it's that tech's impact on the company's revenue or market share that tends to drive it. If Canon has technology for sensors with higher dynamic range (I don't know if it does or doesn't), then it would make sense to have it scheduled for release along a planned timeline and only bring it to market sooner if/when revenue and/or market share suffer.
I often see comments in this forum about "the marketing department" crippling features on a particular model or "milking this sensor as much as they can", et cetera. I share the same impatience for new tech that motivates such sentiments, but Canon is a business first. It's not a community of do-gooders seeking to produce the pinnacle of photographic technology in a single device. This is also why, in business, a company is referred to as "it" and not "they".
The role of the marketing department is to identify and understand as much as possible about the people to whom they want to sell products. Individual decisions about which features go in and which are withheld may be informed by that marketing research, but product managers who report to vice presidents and executives make those types of decisions -- not the marketing team. It's a pain, but milking a technology for awhile is ultimately better in the long run for impatient consumers like me.
Whew! If you managed to read this far, you have stamina and a healthy attention span -- and my sincere apologies for putting you through such a long post!
And with that...
LetTheRightLensIn said:
A friend of my brother used to work for Sandisk. He couldn't divulge details about what was in the release pipeline but said that we'd be simply amazed at the tech they had ready for prime time but wouldn't be released for a couple of years. Like Sandisk, any tech company that wants to survive in the long term will do this. You have to have years of new tech in the pipeline to stay competitive.
From a business perspective, there are a number of sound reasons to use this strategy:
[list type=decimal]
[*]Releasing new generations of tech too rapidly can sometimes make people feel like they just wasted their money because something newer and better just came out. If the expensive new gear is suddenly obsolete, you're less likely to shell out next time (or be tempted to keep waiting for another generation, delaying your purchase -- and revenue to the company).
[*]Delaying release of new tech can allow more time to recoup R&D costs, improve production processes and ultimately make products cheaper (how often do we comment about how cheap data storage is these days?).
[*]Reserving technology for future release helps to even out the peaks and valleys of advancements in technology from new research. It may be a year or two (or more) before a new technology makes it from research to prototype to mass manufacturing. By waiting to release on a more regular "upgrade path", it masks the varying rate of new development and helps keep the revenue more steady.
[*]In most cases, a company tries to capture revenue from multiple markets, often stratified by level of income or discretionary spending. By putting all the whistles and bells in one product, lower markets that represent additional revenue would be lost. Hence, inferior but cheaper products are created to satisfy those market segments.
[*]One company can't always predict what technology a competitor will release and when. Having a pipeline of technology in waiting allows the company to respond with something when a competitor advances. In general, market leaders (Canon) can wait and follow a road map, while competitors (Nikon) tend to release new tech more rapidly as they fight for market share (the rapid pace can also bring quality control issues along for the ride).
[/list]
Of course, knowing and understanding all of this doesn't make it any easier to wait for the next generation of tech to be released! I want it "now" just like most other people. ;D This is where competition is good for the consumer -- it can sometimes nudge a company to release things sooner than planned.
One thing to remember is that the actual tech a competitor releases isn't necessarily the driver for a company to release something in response. From a business perspective, it's that tech's impact on the company's revenue or market share that tends to drive it. If Canon has technology for sensors with higher dynamic range (I don't know if it does or doesn't), then it would make sense to have it scheduled for release along a planned timeline and only bring it to market sooner if/when revenue and/or market share suffer.
I often see comments in this forum about "the marketing department" crippling features on a particular model or "milking this sensor as much as they can", et cetera. I share the same impatience for new tech that motivates such sentiments, but Canon is a business first. It's not a community of do-gooders seeking to produce the pinnacle of photographic technology in a single device. This is also why, in business, a company is referred to as "it" and not "they".
The role of the marketing department is to identify and understand as much as possible about the people to whom they want to sell products. Individual decisions about which features go in and which are withheld may be informed by that marketing research, but product managers who report to vice presidents and executives make those types of decisions -- not the marketing team. It's a pain, but milking a technology for awhile is ultimately better in the long run for impatient consumers like me.
Whew! If you managed to read this far, you have stamina and a healthy attention span -- and my sincere apologies for putting you through such a long post!
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