It's that time of year when I hoist myself up like a giant pinata and let everyone take a whack at me. Yes, my 2010 Predictions page is up, so let the swinging begin.
I use annual predictions to give me a sense of where the industry is and where it might be going. Many years ago (might have been as many as six) I wrote that 2010 was going to be a crossroads year. My prediction was that DSLR market segment growth would hit 10% or less in 2010 (at the time I wrote my prediction it was in the hundreds of percent). Well, things pretty much played out as I expected: 2009 saw perhaps 10% growth, a new low, and most sources predict more of the same moving forward. Meanwhile, compact camera growth really flattened several years ago.
So, the big question moving forward is "how do the camera companies grow?" It won't be by iterating the same formula over and over. Doing that would lead to the same thing we saw happen in the film era: declining SLR sales dominated by only a couple of companies. The areas that seem to have potential to build any growth moving forward are these: (a) sensor disruption, (b) same quality at much smaller size, (c) much higher (MF-like) quality at lower prices, (d) multipurposing (e.g. adding true pro video), (e) photographer-centric redesigns, (f) modularity, (g) truly customer-friendly companies, (h) direct sales, (i) system completeness.
So here's my mini report card for Nikon:
- Sensor Disruption: solid B. The D3s shows that Nikon has some tricks up its sleeve. The real issue is deploying these across the lineup.
- Smaller size: D-. The only "small" camera in the lineup is the D3000, and it's just a re-hased D40x. The FX push has increased camera size for Nikon, unfortunately, something that ultimately needs to be addressed.
- MF-like quality: B. The D3x certainly achieves this, but the pricing is still a bit too close to MF territory. We need that sensor or something similar in a D700 body and near a 5DII price for Nikon to get an A.
- Multipurposing: C. Yes, we've got video, but it's not as good as my GH1 achieves. In some respects, my Flip HD does better, too. Nikon still has a long way to go to get video fleshed out the way the videographers want it.
- Photographer-centric: B-. Nikon's never been really bad at this, and the consistency from body to body is good. But there are still things missing and we've got too many buttons and menus to be able to call it truly photographer-centric.
- Modularity: F. When the same flash operates ever so slightly different on a different body, even the crude modularity that we do have is missing something. Curiously, Nikon did work on a truly modular camera this decade. Where it disappeared to I don't know.
- Customer-friendly: D. Every now and then I get hints that some within Nikon get it and try to help customers, then something happens that makes me lose hope again. The problem is that it isn't a company priority.
- Direct Sales: F. Nikon does everything through dealers, even NPS priority purchases. I understand why they do that, but as margins get hammered more and more, someone is going to break out of the pack and cut out a distribution piece to reclaim margin (and/or lower prices).
- System Completeness: B-. We're missing too many things--mostly lenses--to give a higher grade.
As I've written many times, Nikon's a technology-based company. It's going to be technology changes that they look to in order to find new growth and profits. As I write in my predictions, we'll see a bit of that in 2010. But 2011 is when I expect to see what Nikon really has up its sleeve, technology-wise.