Sony A7SII announced !

[psolberg]

I'm not surprised. Sony has a huge RD division and they have been a leader in semiconductors for far longer than I can remember. Canon is simply outspent, out performed and out matched. However canon is competing with sony like it competes with Nikon: simply try to out-muscle them. That will not work with sony, as sony cannot just match them in size and scale, but budget, if not exceed them. Canon needs to go back to its roots: understand its market. Sony is giving people what they want. Canon is simply betting on lens mount lock-in to keep its base around.

In many ways, canon is exactly where nikon was some years ago: huffing and puffing its market position while doing nothing to become more nimble. In many ways, sony is the new canon: a challenger company that has nothing to lose so it takes risks.

So kudos to sony, they deserve their wins. Canon, well you know a company that is in a panic when their have to resort to announcing prototypes or "developments" they are working on. You can be both sony and nikon are doing the same things, but they are not silly enough to tip the competition when they have no product to sell.

It's interesting, none of us know the future, and no of us know how much profit any company is making, and whereas we all want to invest in a manufacturer that will be around for years to come, the reality is Nikon, Canon, Sony will I'm sure be around for a long while yet.

I remember everyone (not here) going that Apple will fail, Android will succeed, yet whereas Android phones have the lions share of the market, Apple have the lions share of the profit. We dont know how much profit they (camera manufacturers) are making so saying that one is dominating the other is frankly mute - no one can prove a thing. Revenue or % market share is important, but profit makes the difference.

As for marketing products not released - that's a normal marketing ploy, you want to keep your customers from going elsewhere. At CES every year, we see TVs being shown, but not released, along with a whole lot of other products.

I agree that Sony has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, and that the competition they bring is good for us. But, as most users of any of the current systems will tell you (so long as they're not trying to generate web traffic to gain income), any of the dSLRs or mirrorless systems are more than a match for what you do. Go read Tom Hogan who writes Nikon books. It's more about learning to use the system to its' potential and actually taking photos then it is about trying to convince others that they've bought into a dead system and as a result they cant take decent photos any more.

For Canon rumors, all these threads are good business. The more we argue, the more hits, the more money. I get that. But it would be good if every time a new camera is released from any manufacturer, people focused more on what it does, and less on why it beats the beejeepers out of the competition and therefore no one can take a good photo or video with the kit they have....

I'm not sure what you mean. Public companies report how much profit they make. They are required to do this. Canon releases quarterly reports like nikon and sony do. They must. Do they fudge things a bit, off course, but we WILL know if Nikon/Canon camera divisions are struggling. It isn't as hidden as you believe even if we don't have access to the internal data.


Also everybody wants to be apple: huge margins, a fanatical base. The reality is that few, if any companies can exist that way or even achieve it. Canon is no apple. not even close. Plenty of companies do retreat because of declines in numbers. In fact that is the norm. So using apple as an example is really misguided because apple is not like anything out there. Even so Apple is also not invincible: double digit declines in ipad sales are not reversing. The iphone lift has to keep going year after year and any hiccups will be felt as that is basically their only business. It's their "windows" back before microsoft diversified into a million profit centers. Canon is more like microsoft: many profit centers. So the camera division isn't necessarily betting the company. The question is how will their division cope with the changes even as the larger entity goes on. Yes, Android will continue to dominate the future of mobile computing by numbers. Apple may still manage to keep people upgrading iphones, and canon may still manage to keep some professionals buying 1Dxs. It is not that they will go away. That is silly. The question is what role. It may very well be, Nikon/Canon become niche players, like the Medium Format players of today, while Sony runs away with the market. or not.

 

[Stu_bert]

I'm not surprised. Sony has a huge RD division and they have been a leader in semiconductors for far longer than I can remember. Canon is simply outspent, out performed and out matched. However canon is competing with sony like it competes with Nikon: simply try to out-muscle them. That will not work with sony, as sony cannot just match them in size and scale, but budget, if not exceed them. Canon needs to go back to its roots: understand its market. Sony is giving people what they want. Canon is simply betting on lens mount lock-in to keep its base around.

In many ways, canon is exactly where nikon was some years ago: huffing and puffing its market position while doing nothing to become more nimble. In many ways, sony is the new canon: a challenger company that has nothing to lose so it takes risks.

So kudos to sony, they deserve their wins. Canon, well you know a company that is in a panic when their have to resort to announcing prototypes or "developments" they are working on. You can be both sony and nikon are doing the same things, but they are not silly enough to tip the competition when they have no product to sell.

It's interesting, none of us know the future, and no of us know how much profit any company is making, and whereas we all want to invest in a manufacturer that will be around for years to come, the reality is Nikon, Canon, Sony will I'm sure be around for a long while yet.

I remember everyone (not here) going that Apple will fail, Android will succeed, yet whereas Android phones have the lions share of the market, Apple have the lions share of the profit. We dont know how much profit they (camera manufacturers) are making so saying that one is dominating the other is frankly mute - no one can prove a thing. Revenue or % market share is important, but profit makes the difference.

As for marketing products not released - that's a normal marketing ploy, you want to keep your customers from going elsewhere. At CES every year, we see TVs being shown, but not released, along with a whole lot of other products.

I agree that Sony has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, and that the competition they bring is good for us. But, as most users of any of the current systems will tell you (so long as they're not trying to generate web traffic to gain income), any of the dSLRs or mirrorless systems are more than a match for what you do. Go read Tom Hogan who writes Nikon books. It's more about learning to use the system to its' potential and actually taking photos then it is about trying to convince others that they've bought into a dead system and as a result they cant take decent photos any more.

For Canon rumors, all these threads are good business. The more we argue, the more hits, the more money. I get that. But it would be good if every time a new camera is released from any manufacturer, people focused more on what it does, and less on why it beats the beejeepers out of the competition and therefore no one can take a good photo or video with the kit they have....

I'm not sure what you mean. Public companies report how much profit they make. They are required to do this. Canon releases quarterly reports like nikon and sony do. They must. Do they fudge things a bit, off course, but we WILL know if Nikon/Canon camera divisions are struggling. It isn't as hidden as you believe even if we don't have access to the internal data.


Also everybody wants to be apple: huge margins, a fanatical base. The reality is that few, if any companies can exist that way or even achieve it. Canon is no apple. not even close. Plenty of companies do retreat because of declines in numbers. In fact that is the norm. So using apple as an example is really misguided because apple is not like anything out there. Even so Apple is also not invincible: double digit declines in ipad sales are not reversing. The iphone lift has to keep going year after year and any hiccups will be felt as that is basically their only business. It's their "windows" back before microsoft diversified into a million profit centers. Canon is more like microsoft: many profit centers. So the camera division isn't necessarily betting the company. The question is how will their division cope with the changes even as the larger entity goes on. Yes, Android will continue to dominate the future of mobile computing by numbers. Apple may still manage to keep people upgrading iphones, and canon may still manage to keep some professionals buying 1Dxs. It is not that they will go away. That is silly. The question is what role. It may very well be, Nikon/Canon become niche players, like the Medium Format players of today, while Sony runs away with the market. or not.

I didnt think they broke it down even to product families. If they do, then I stand corrected.

Sony is just the latest kid on the block. You are forecasting doom for Canon, a niche player. The same was said about Apple with all the Android sales, yet Apple makes good profit out of their models. I was not stating they are invincible, nor that Canon is trying to be an Apple. And yes, as the largest tech company, of course everyone wants to be like them. But your doom and gloom for Canon appears to be based solely around Sony releasing products that You think are good.

It's about staying in business. It's about making a profit. For the "upstarts", their only line of attack is pricing and innovation. Does not mean they will be successful, or become niche.

Why has the bottom fallen out of the dSLR market? Because smartphones are good enough for most people's needs. How many people who buy a camera know what a Sony has over an Olympus or a Fuji. And for those that do know, just how many are going to chase the latest tech and jump ship?

Sony may indeed be aggressively attacking Canon and Nikon. What happens if they don't make a good profit from the cameras? Sure their sensors division are doing well, but is the camera side doing well ? And is it fact or Sony huffing and puffing and showing they are more successful than they are?

The arguments can continue till the cows come home. Frankly it is just an exercise in futility....