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Interesting Article

Terry, that's a very interesting (although not detailed enough by far) article. With regard to the mention of NuCore and Contax/Kyocera that may be related to their P&S models. It would be nice if it was not only related to them!
Paul
 
There will be no "Intel" of digital cameras. Sales of new digital P&S cameras will go down hill for most major camera manufacturers. They will be competing with "Cannonnns", "Niiikkons" and other unknown manufacturers mass-producing cheap junk in Taiwan, China, etc. For the higher end - people are not going to pay $500 or more for next digital camera every two-three years. It will be actually far more interesting to see what happens in advanced-amateur or "pro" market. Aggressive price wars will definitely touch that part of the market as well, but there can be no absolute leader for as long as people need to mount lenses on these cameras. People are getting into specific system, not into specific camera. You can have PC running your applications with Intel, AMD or VIA processor, but you can't have a Canon camera easily using Nikon, Olympus and Pentax lenses.

Also, any major player like Sony, Kodak, Canon or Nikon will play their own tune for as long as they make money on it. Once they start cost-cutting by getting third party chips to do the job - quality goes down hill and production moves to cheapest factory. And that's a dead-end, where they again have to compete with junk manufacturers.

And of course, don't forget that all Western markets will be flooded with cellphones with "good-enough" digital cameras very soon. And for most teenagers their "bought-it-last-year" digital cameras will become as obsolete and useless as their film P&S of 5 years ago. And the advanced grandmas that started using digital P&S cause their grandson insisted "it is easy" will either use it or drop it alltogether.

Does anyone remember time when everyone was buying camcorders? I'm willing to bet that less than 10% of all people that bought them are actually using them.
 
The next wave will be MP4 compression iPods with phone and photo ability built right in.

Good old film will become the high end again, because no one will have one ; -)
 
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