Nikon Straits

It seems all odds are against Nikon. It is not only Sony who was first to realize the mechanical mirror in professional cameras was a thing of the past. This mirror was the "R" (reflex) in DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) and was redirecting the lens image to an optical viewfinder, when composing, and then was lifting up to let the image be captured by a sensor. That was needed in the "film" era. In the digital era, a viewfinder can be fully electronic, coupled with the sensor, so no need for the mirror. Nikon did not have this reflex Sony had (pun intended). So they too moved to the "mirrorless" era, albeit a couple of years late. That lack of reflex costed them a significant loss of the market share. In the market which itself is shrinking heavily due to the invasion of smart phones. So you may say Nikon has been hit by Apple.

And surprisingly Apple has got involved again in competing with Nikon indirectly via Intel, one of the key Nikon's customer. Apple's developments were not the cause of Nikon's problems, but Nikon's exposure to underperforming Intel clearly has not helped.

To me Nikon (and there are several companies like it) has ultimately fallen victim to its ignorance of product (and especially the software) user experience. They have continued on improving their key engineering KPIs, like the optical performance, the image processing performance (including autofocus) and even the physical ergonomics. But the addressable market for their cameras has been shrinking mainly because smartphones started offering comparable (in many aspects) photographic results with the processing workflow (thanks to the connectivity and apps) which is in another galaxy.

There is a very small group of customers who know how to (and are willing to) copy NEF files from an SD card, convert it to (more compatible and future-proof) DNG, adjust (learning to use complex and expensive software like Lightroom) the photos and export to JPGs, which are then uploaded to Google Photos. A phone can do all that with 1 (or even zero) clicks.

Setting the mirror (reflex) story aside, the DSL (Digital Single Lens Reflex) market would look entirely different if the traditional manufacturers had got together, defined open, interoperable, wireless camera - phone - cloud integration technologies and protocols. There is no reason why post-processing photos shot with a professional camera should be any more complex compared to post processing photos shot with a smart phone.

User experience wins against (technically) superior technologies. We live in a world where time and attention are scarce. Products acknowledging these scarcities will be winning even if fundamentally their technologies are not the best performing ones.