It's been interesting to watch the sine wave in action. WTF is Thom talking about now? For 40 years I've been aware that press/public opinion tends to run in sine waves. Products are either over-hyped at launch (think the original iPhone, which didn't apps and wasn't all that great a phone), or underhyped (the Nikon 1 is coming to mind at the moment ;~). As reality starts to set in, the overall opinion center usually starts to shift towards the opposite pole. If the product is bad and the initial hype was over-bad, well, the sine wave goes flat. But if the product is good and the initial hype is over-bad, we see the full sine wave in action and eventually the just good product becomes better-than-good in opinions.
So let me throw you just one example of something that ought to raise a few eyebrows: consider that you photograph for a sports Web site. Consider that you never post anything bigger than 800 pixels. Now put an 85mm f/1.4G on the Nikon 1 and go to your next event. You're working two stops faster than the 70-200mm guy and 52 frames per second faster. Say what? Could that be useful? You bet it could be. Now think about sports coverage that is mostly Web based, as in Extreme Sports. Hmm, carry some GoPros and a Nikon 1 with the right lenses and I'm set.
Or consider the #1 question from soccer moms: what DSLR and lens should I get to photograph my kid's sports? Let's see, they've got a 1080P TV, the Nikon 1 captures 1080P stills at 60 fps, it's got reasonable low light credibility, stick some fast F-mount lenses on it and it suddenly becomes a camera you might be able to photograph from the stands with.
The world isn't about just big behemoth SLR-type cameras any more. Not everyone needs 24mp (actually, very few do).
Frankly, I'm not sure Nikon actually understands the world they're enabling, as their marketing materials simply suck at driving home why you might want a Nikon 1. But they'll figure it out eventually. Right after the customers do.