Comentários de Thom Hogan acerca da última PMA:Grifei os trechos que achei mais interessantes / importantes...
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www.bythom.comFeb 6) Post PMA we're getting a lot of the same emails and forum posts. Basically, they go something like this: "Watch out Nikon and Canon, Sony's new Live View (or fill-in-the-blank's new fill-in-the-blank) is going to blow you out of the market."
Such "observations" are not really observations, but wishful thinking. The problem for all smaller-share players in a market dominated by legacy players is simple: how do you take market share and hold it? It's not as simple as coming up with a new feature (even a useful one). Sony's approach to Live View (viewfinder CCD)
is one that Olympus pioneered, and it didn't win Olympus any new market share. Indeed, in that last sentence you see the problem: if Olympus and Sony can use the same approach, what's going to stop Nikon, Canon, Pentax, et.al., using the same approach down the line?
You might think that patents are the answer, but that hasn't proven to be the case in the past. First, there are too many cross-licensing agreements in place amongst these companies to keep new technology to themselves. Second, there are always ways around patents. Worse still, some of the underlying patents aren't in the hands of the player making use of them, which means licensing to others is possible. Finally, there's the patents themselves: they simply may not be enforceable (viewing via a viewfinder sensor were discussed in public well prior to their actual design; indeed,
the Nikon F5 had "live view" via Photo Secretary back in the 1990's, and I've been asking since the beginning of the digital era where that capability went).
It takes a disruptive technology to make significant inroads against established players, and even then you don't always win. In SLRs we have the case of Minolta,
who jumped first on phase detecting autofocus technology (and violated Honeywell's patents in doing so). Minolta managed to climb into the top tier of SLR makers for a short time, at one point taking about a third of the market. But note that Nikon and Canon both adopted phase detection technology very quickly,
essentially negating the upstart's seeming technology advantage. Some say that the distraction of the Honeywell suit crippled Minolta--and it most certainly slowed them--but in the end little performance aspects count,
such as shutter lag, 100% viewfinders, frame rates, and much more. At least amongst serious photographers. You have to deliver it all, not just a new feature, and you have to do it across an entire line of products, not just a handful.
It's true
that marketing is one key element to all this. Sony and Pentax, for example, seem to be trying the "check box" approach to features: got IS, got sensor cleaning, got live view, got...well, you get the idea. The problem is that their check boxes are at most a generation ahead of the big competitors they wish to unseat, and they're running low on useful ammo.
The only real drawback to the new Nikon D60 vis-a-vis the new Sony Alpha 350 is lack of Live View. How much do you want to bet that the next consumer DSLR introduced by Nikon has Live View?
I'm impressed by Sony's efforts.
They certainly are pressing forward hard and showing that they want that third spot very badly. The technology problem-solving they're showing is also impressive. But short of a true disruptive technology that the others can't easily reproduce, it's not going to be as easy as they seem to think to topple the leaders. Will Sony and Pentax/Samsung bite off some market share from the leaders? Probably, though it's going to be expensive to do (either through bigger advertising presence, shelf-space incentives, and/or consumer pricing).
Will Nikon and Canon sit quietly while others take any market share from them? Not a chance.
Game on; but not over. Boa Leitura!!!
