I hear comments along the lines of "X released the Y in response to the Z" all the time. Moreover, Internet fora then pick up on this same idea and suggest specific things like "Canon should release a retro-design body like Nikon did with the Zf."
These simplifications belie a naïveté about product management, that products are created in response to other products.
It may look something like that from the outside, but the real thing going on is that products are created because potential new, additional, and upgrading customers seem to have been identified.
One problem I have is that Tokyo is immersed in paternalistic self observation. The Japanese companies believe they "know" what customers want and need, and produce that instead of what customers may actually might want and need. Worse still, as we've seen with the continued cancellations of compact cameras and the rising pricing levels of the cameras that the Japanese still want to sell, the real "design initiative" in Tokyo became mostly centered around accounting. The companies were willing to sacrifice volume to keep profits and return on investment up. The counters in Japan haven't met a bean they won't pay attention to.
However, when a competitor company suddenly produces a new hit product that isn't anything like their own, the Japanese companies also panic and believe that they may need to do something similar in order to win that same customer. So, yes, the dog does chase its tail, but that chasing is about customers, not a specific product.
As I was pondering the above, I received an email that claimed that Japan is starting to really worry that the Chinese will begin making cameras around a new Chinese "open" lens mount. The implication, of course, is that such interchangeable lens cameras (ILC) will turn out to be less expensive than what the Japanese are producing these days, have a wide array of potential lenses, and this would then put Japanese ILC sales and margins at risk. Count them beans, boys.
Apparently all through Honshu the strategists have been asleep at the wheel.
Let me point out one example. Nikon saw the action camera market that GoPro pioneered and decided to hone in on that (new customer!). Nikon's KeyMission cameras were reasonable designs, but the issues with them were manyfold, and they didn't really add anything new. Meanwhile Nikon didn't really have any particular cost advantage over GoPro. Nikon also found that a lot of GoPro's success was due to merchandizing deals in stores, and those are costly. The KeyMissions used Nikon's barely adequate SnapBridge communications, and had no back end that Nikon supported, another ding. Nikon's Ambassadors, for the most part, weren't the folk that the action-camera-buying crowd would look to for advice on what to buy and why it works.
Contrast that to DJI and the Osmo. The Osmo directly takes on the GoPro Hero and, as far as I'm concerned, with the latest version (4) has topped it in a number of critical performance and usability issues. The DJI Mimo software works in ways SnapBridge can only dream about. DJI has cost advantages that neither GoPro or Nikon have. DJI is already entrenched in the crowd that is action camera adjacent (via drones).
So. The Japanese ran away from the smartphone market by killing compacts. And Nikon ran away from the action market when it got its first bruise. And now they're worried they might have to run from some Chinese ILCs? Sure, good luck with all that running.
I've been pointing out for a decade-and-a-half now where the disconnect (literally) is: 21st century communications and software. Let me throw just one simple example at you of just how disconnected Tokyo camera design is: why is it that after walking on a trail in one of our great National Park taking some photos, I get back to my car and the photos I just took aren't automatically uploaded to my home NAS? My car is Internet connected. The phone I carry in my car is Internet connected. I can show someone in my car my photos that are stored at home ;~). But getting my photos from my camera to my home and back is...well, impossible at the moment with what the Japanese have given us.
The irony in all of this is that the Japanese were the first to be moving photos around in their Internet systems (and using early Japanese cell phones, too).
Let me take another angle on things: if the Japanese are indeed just looking at what the other companies have done and copying that, this is much like always mating with your relatives: the DNA eventually erodes—called genetic erosion—instead of developing new potentially useful patterns.
The camera companies are looking at their problems (smartphones, action cameras, Chinese makers) the wrong way. They need to see and understand why those things resonate with customers and figure out how to add those DNA snippets to their products, not isolate their products further.
More importantly: if you put all your wagons in a circle, your competitors know exactly where to attack you, because you're not moving.
