Today is a mixed message day from Nikon, at least at first glance. Or is it?
Let's start with the D60: the D40x got an update in 12 months. Most of the things in the update are trickle downs from the high end lineup. Gee, that still sounds aggressive to me, and it seems to indicate that Nikon is going to continue to roll frequent updates in the consumer lineup, basically as fast as they can do the integration. Note that D40x, D60, and D300 were all "short cycle" products, coming faster than expected. If the D80 replacement is on track for Spring announcement, Nikon will have effectively gone to compact-speed camera rotations with the DSLR lineup.
That's good news for me, I suppose, at it gives me a constant stream of product to write about, but it's not necessarily great news for consumers. You'll note that late last year I wrote about skipping a generation between buying new DSLRs, and I think that's going to be the norm pretty much from here on out. Individual iterations sometimes look good on paper, as the marketing departments crank lots of effort into describing new functions and features and make them seem compelling. But on close examination, are you really getting better pictures from Generation 6 than you were from Generation 5? Yes, but not enough so to pay full price again for the privilege.
The lens situation is interesting. Nikon has essentially said the following: we're continuing to roll with desirable DX zooms, we're re-establishing a full macro line, and we'll be extending the lens options to a full tilt-shift line. Those are all good things, and we shouldn't discount their importance. On the other hand, we're still missing a lot of basic lenses. I'll have much more to say about lenses soon, but the bottom line is still the same as what it was last time I wrote about missing lenses: Nikon needs to up their game. I've liked almost all of Nikon's recent lens offerings, but why is it I still find significant gaps in my case? If Nikon go from making 0 to 4 million plus DSLRs in less than a decade, I think they can fix a system that has historically produced only 5 lenses a year (and many of them were just updates).
As for Coolpix, well, they say a rising tide floats all boats, and that's the only good news on the Coolpix front: Nikon still launches new boats, though they all seem to be the same basic designs with new paint jobs and new names for the paint (e.g. "urban black" and "titanium silver").