Graydon's post was the first to make complete, rational sense in this entire thread. I find it amusing that it seems to have been completely ignored by the "doom & gloom" crowd.
John -- http://www.neovenator.com http://www.cafepress.com/calemp http://www.cafepress.com/neovenatorphoto -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Hoya to seek digital camera alliance From: Graydon <[email protected]> Date: Wed, August 19, 2009 7:12 pm To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List <[email protected]> On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 03:27:49PM -0400, Perry Pellechia scripsit: > I was planning on buying a K7, but when a company says they are > pessimistic that they can survive why should we believe they can? That's not even *close* to what he said. The guy is *Japanese*. Japanese software never, ever, under any circumstances, tells you to "press OK button to continue"; that would be having an inanimate object give a command to a person, and that would be unacceptably rude. It says things like "your experience could possibly be improved should you elect to press the OK button". Japanese software firms will not admit to the existence of bugs, either; they produce point releases which enhance existing features. (Sometimes they enhance them into not destroying your data, but admitting to a specific bug? No. Not done.) So for a Japanese exec to say "we're not large enough to support arbitrary future camera development" is a loss of face. Needing a partner; also a loss of face. Very gloomy. Nothing at all about the short and medium-term viability of the business, just "we can't take on Canon and Sony and Panasonic by ourselves". Which has been blessed obvious for quite some time now, really. Samsung, well, we'll see. They're in the Sony and Panasonic size class; the problem is that they're Korean, and Japanese/Korean relations have this element of irrationality. (As in, Japanese people are reluctant to buy cameras with Korean sensors in them.) But, you know, the future is uncertain; someone might figure out how to dynamically sinter variable diffraction lenses out of tetrahedral carbon, aluminium, and fluorine for dirt cheap, and someone else might figure out how to make sensors out of coated glass fibre, and the entire camera business as we know it could disappear next year. There is no knowing. For now, though, I don't see any particular reason for panic, or even particular concern; the Pentax camera business is apparently hitting their short term sales targets, starting to think about more market share and taking on Sony and Canon, and therefor prepping the ground for "will require partner", so that it's a sound strategic alliance rather than humiliating desperation when they go do it. Face management, that's all. Absolutely vital to an East Asian firm. -- Graydon -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
