Nikon Rudderless?

I love Nikon cameras and lenses. They just seem to fit my hands and work/play flow better than others but, I worry I could be left with an orphan camera system to go with my old Minolta stuff which I felt the same way about.

Nikon isn't going anywhere anytime soon. I wouldn't worry about it. One of problems is Nikon makes their DSLRs really well and they last for a long time. I mean heck, first generation DSLRs from Nikon are still working just as good as they were when they came out! Lenses are superb and they have legacy support, I mean heck you can literally mount Nikkor lenses from the 50s on a brand new 2017 Nikon camera without a silly adapter. I believe Nikon has some tricks up their sleeves that will turn things around rather quickly. All companies go through this at some point.
 
What Nikon really needs to do is what many Japanese and other companies have done.

Create a "premium line" which would stay "Nikon"

then create 1 or 2 lower tier product line.

The first one they could use a name recognizeable though not used .. like Nikon's "Samsung" cameras.

Then possibly create a low end non-Nikon-identified, chinese throw-away made line that is totally revolutionary and contains no physical controls, it's all voice activated. by not having buttons and switches it would lower the price tremendously.

Call that line, hmmm .. let's see... the "TonyN" line of cameras but the voice control would do something random from what you asked for. Then we can all continued to complain that Tony N just doesn't listen to us and doesn't understand and is a whacko.

The first tier would improve cash flow on lower priced, consumer priced friendly cameras.

The 2nd tier would create cash flow and warranty work on low end cameras that people don't expect to get much out of anything anyways.

A Win-Win-Win scenario. Well, except for maybe the TonyN line of cameras. They may have to drop that line sooner or later.
 
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What Nikon really needs to do is what many Japanese and other companies have done.

Create a "premium line" which would stay "Nikon"

then create 1 or 2 lower tier product line.

The first one they could use a name recognizeable though not used .. like Nikon's "Samsung" cameras.

Then possibly create a low end non-Nikon-identified, chinese throw-away made line that is totally revolutionary and contains no physical controls, it's all voice activated. by not having buttons and switches it would lower the price tremendously.

Call that line, hmmm .. let's see... the "TonyN" line of cameras but the voice control would do something random from what you asked for. Then we can all continued to complain that Tony N just doesn't listen to us and doesn't understand and is a whacko.

The first tier would improve cash flow on lower priced, consumer priced friendly cameras.

The 2nd tier would create cash flow and warranty work on low end cameras that people don't expect to get much out of anything anyways.

A Win-Win-Win scenario. Well, except for maybe the TonyN line of cameras. They may have to drop that line sooner or later.

But Tony is chill.
 
Nikon used to mean their top bodies. Nikkormat used to be consumer bodies.
 
The thing is a few years back every company was going insane with growth because the global markets were opening up; people had money and felt they had free cash to spend and a lot of consumer interest drove high end items down in price. The digital revolution also opened up cameras to a huge market who otherwise were not interested.

So suddenly you got a massive market growth. Now ew are in time where the market is stagnating if not contracting in some areas so you see projects aiming to corner new markets; increased competition and companies downsizing. And because they are big companies a little downsize is still hundreds to thousands of peoples jobs.

It's flawed economic thinking that companies must improve upon each years profits; indeed that model of a consumer and constant increase in profit economic system is quickly starting to fall apart as; whilst it still works; it shows that once you get so big there isn't any more growth - plus continued mindless growth through poor products (ergo lots of new ones cycling fast) is not only poor use of limited global resources; but also leaves you easily open to ahving your user-base poached by a longer lasting, better quality product.


All the big camera companies will downsize somewhat as the market settles and as mobile phones eat a chunk of one end; but unless they are miss-managed or fail to downsize, they shouldn't die off.
 

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