In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mark Erickson) wrote:
Since digital cameras are high-volume items, it's probably significantly more profitable to keep this development in-house rather than pay royalties to, say, Microsoft (or even PalmSource).
Mobile phones are much higher-volume items, and a large proportion of them run third-party operating systems: Symbian, Palm or Microsoft. Cameras have much simpler communications needs than mobiles, and the user interface requirements are quite fierce.
Excellent points. The phone situation is interesting--I think that third-party operating systems in mobile phones appeared at least partly because of the effort to push PDA functionality into mobile phones. In that case, the manufacturers have a very strong incentive to make their devices compatible with established PDA operating systems. This guarantees an instant potential market.
I think that high-performance cameras (as opposed to sub-megapixel cameraphones) are different. The camera user interface is well-established in the form of the camera shape, the shutter button placement, viewfinder, etc. Thus, there isn't really any benefit to having a Palm or Symbian OS in the camera for taking pictures. I have trouble believing that anyone would want to pay extra to be able to run PocketPC or PalmOS applications on a DSLR.
--Mark
