Canon today announced EOS Webcam Utility Pro and will discontinue the basic EOS Webcam Utility approach on August 25th. EOS Webcam Utility now uses a freemium model that requires an account with Canon. For free you get dirt basic connection. For US$50/year, you get a host of features that, in my mind, don't add up to the price for 99% of those doing Cam-ing on the Web.
Normally you'd expect that when you purchase a camera, that it enables you to do everything that the camera can do. But just as automakers poked at SaS (service as subscription) as a way of adding function-for-pay, the camera makers have dabbled at it from time to time (e.g. Sony's custom gridlines for a fee).
The thing that concerns me is that no camera maker has proven to be good at software, and when you start trying to sell subscriptions for function, you're in the software business.
This latest poke at SaS that comes from Canon has a list of the paid features that reads a lot like "duplicates functions I'm getting from other existing products."
Why would Canon be doing this? Mostly because they don't want to be muscled out of an area that they thought they should own. You need a camera to Zoom conference, for instance, but much of what the video stream is doing once received by the computer is now controlled by Zoom and others. The camera is just a widget you need that you connect with a cable. Once you've bought the widget, the camera maker is out of the picture (pardon the pun).
The most revealing feature of the new EOS Webcam Utility Pro subscription option that suggests this displeasure at being muscled out is this: "change camera settings via app."
I've written it for decades now: if you're actually a "systems camera" maker, you need to enable the ecosystem that surrounds your product. Not partially, but fully. Canon is trying to not just control but own the entire EOS ecosystem. Witness the non-licensing and apparently suit-threatening surrounding the RF mount, for instance. I'd tend to say that Canon's approach here is contradictory to one of their long-stated goals: own the majority of the camera market in volume.
I have no problem paying for good software that's maintained, upgraded, and added to regularly and which also has excellent support. Do I get any hint that I'd be getting that from Canon's new offering? No.
The danger is that any of these pay-for-function things attempted by a camera company gets real traction. Given that four companies own over 90% of the market, once the dam breaks, we'll be flooded with SaS, with no indication that they actually care much about what the customers need or think. Customer service and support at all the camera companies pretty much sucks right now, and I don't see it getting better any time soon.
