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Jeremo
!iKGMr61IHM
>>181092
just to substantiate my own view, Thom Hogan says it a little bit better than i could.
____________________________________________ The Problem of Innovation in a Mature Market Feb 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).
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