Lack of refinement hurts entry-level DSLRs
in [Digital Cameras]
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From: stephe_k on 25 Mar 2010 13:09 tony cooper wrote: > On 25 Mar 2010 10:38:24 GMT, Chris Malcolm <cam(a)holyrood.ed.ac.uk> > wrote: > >> It also matters a great deal who the CEO is. Sometimes the CEO is the >> original founder of the company and basically a visionary engineer. In >> those cases we often see that when the original CEO dies or retires >> accountants advised by marketing take over the running of the >> company. The company stops being visionary and becomes more of a >> conservative "me-too" player in the marketplace. It ossifies and stops >> being innovative. > > The other side of the coin is when the original CEO is gone and > engineers take over and the company goes into a death spiral because > the company starts to develop innovative products that are so > expensive to produce that they can't be sold at a profit or are > products that have such a limited market that not enough are sold. > > The successful company is one with a balance of engineering and > marketing influence. > > Which I don't believe describes what Kodak has been doing lately! Stephanie
From: tony cooper on 25 Mar 2010 13:25 On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:02:03 -0400, "stephe_k(a)yahoo.com" <stephe_k(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >Chris Malcolm wrote: > >> >> There have also been a number of cases where what management and >> marketing were insisting on working on was considered to be so stupid >> by some of their best engineers that they left and formed their own >> company to develop the new innovative product that those engineers >> were sure the market wanted, but which the company refused to put a >> penny of development towards. >> > > >I have no doubt this happens, but what started this thread was the >"feature set" a specific DSLR model in the lineup has enabled. Not how a >totally brand new product comes about. I stand by my post that the >marketing people make this decision, not the guys in the lab. In my experience, there is no one point where a decision is made that determines what product will be made, and no one department originates such a decision. The marketing people come up with a want list of features that their research - or study of the competition - show that are features that the buying public desire. The engineering people come up with prototypes of product that incorporate as many feature as are feasible. The finance people do cost analysis to see if the prototypes can be produced at the price point the marketing people come up with. There's a great deal of back-and-forth and trade-offs before a final model is determined. It's inconceivable to me that either marketing alone or engineering alone can determine what is eventually produced. There are instances of engineering coming up with a feature that is eventually incorporated into the final product, but marketing and finance have to sign on that the feature is desirable and the cost to add that feature can be recovered. Of course, one of the goals of marketing is to make a feature *seem* desirable to the market. We've all bought products with features that have been extolled by marketing only to find that the feature really doesn't add to the product's usefulness. -- Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
From: stephe_k on 25 Mar 2010 15:11 tony cooper wrote: > On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:02:03 -0400, "stephe_k(a)yahoo.com" > <stephe_k(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > >> Chris Malcolm wrote: >> >>> There have also been a number of cases where what management and >>> marketing were insisting on working on was considered to be so stupid >>> by some of their best engineers that they left and formed their own >>> company to develop the new innovative product that those engineers >>> were sure the market wanted, but which the company refused to put a >>> penny of development towards. >>> >> >> I have no doubt this happens, but what started this thread was the >> "feature set" a specific DSLR model in the lineup has enabled. Not how a >> totally brand new product comes about. I stand by my post that the >> marketing people make this decision, not the guys in the lab. > > In my experience, there is no one point where a decision is made that > determines what product will be made, and no one department originates > such a decision. > OK but what we were talking about is when a model is CAPABLE of a certain feature, has the hardware to incorporate this feature, but the firmware is written to DISABLE this feature. It isn't costing them any money as the hardware for this feature is already there, they chose to DISABLE it on a lower cost model to make the higher cost model have a feature set the cheaper one doesn't. I fail to see how this is anything other than marketing. YMMV Stephanie
From: Neil Harrington on 26 Mar 2010 00:18 "tony cooper" <tony_cooper213(a)earthlink.net> wrote in message news:tjlmq5d52141e66cpl37fnm3q9unu06d0l(a)4ax.com... > On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 02:22:35 -0400, "Neil Harrington" <never(a)home.com> > wrote: > >>> So who do YOU think gave the engineering department the green light to >>> do >>> the research for the project? >> >>Management. Of course. > > You seem to think that "management" is a separate function. In > actuality, some of the management people and some of the engineering > people are in management. Some of the top management will come from > the engineering side and some from the marketing side. > >>> And how many space shuttles did they sell to the public? >> >>That is my point. The space shuttle was not designed for the mass market. >>Neither was the $25,000 Kodak DSC. Ergo, there was no particular reason >>for >>your "marketing people" to be involved. > > That's a silly example. The shuttle was not designed to be re-sold so > there is no "market" involved. You think Rockwell built it for NASA for free? How are resellers necessary for a market to exist? Many houses (perhaps most) are built to sell directly to the end buyer. Are these not part of the housing market? In the case of space shuttles, NASA is the market, is it not? > > -- > Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
From: MikeWhy on 26 Mar 2010 02:08
"RichA" <rander3127(a)gmail.com> wrote in message news:eeac76d5-8335-4579-a6ac-2dfc7c264ccd(a)33g2000yqj.googlegroups.com... > For $699 or so, you can't > expect miracles, but I remember that $699 would buy a pretty decent > film body, that didn't have drawbacks and could shoot images (unless > they needed a 5fps motor drive) on-par with pro bodies since film was > film. Ah, the Golden Days, when film was cheap, wet chemistry even cheaper, and even so, the cost of the camera itself insignificant in comparison. You're not trying at all if you can't recoup the cost of the body of a DSLR in the first year of ownership. |