By this point, a crippling blow dealt to compress cameras by a arise of smartphones is aged news, though camera manufacturers are now ascent counterattacks. They’ve positively suffered for prolonged enough. Sales for compress cameras fell by 30% in 2011 alone, and kept on falling. They’re during 102 million units for this year, compared to 144 million units just 3 years ago.
Very soon, we’ll be saying some of a initial estimable responses to this descending direct by camera manufacturers. A lot of new hum has focused on a Sony “Lens Cameras,†a total wizz lens and sensor meant to be plugged into a smartphone.
While it will expected urge on your existent phone camera, it won’t be that revolutionary. After all, consumers are ditching their compress cameras privately since their phones are already good adequate for day-to-day snapshots. Plus, while it is flattering neat to share shots taken on your lens camera directly by smartphone apps, that’s already flattering easy to do with WiFi-capable cameras like a Canon N.
The Nexus 4, predecessor to a arriving Nexus 5
Nikon, however, competence respond to a conditions in a opposite way: by cashing in on a brand. Last March, rumors started to surface that a arriving Google-made Nexus 5 smartphone would underline a Nikon branded camera. These are still usually rumors, though many sources are assured of their outcome nonetheless.
Keep in mind, a lot of people also suspicion that a recently expelled Lumia 1020 would underline a Canon branded camera, though it did not.
So let’s call this a suppositious question: would it be a good thought for Nikon to work with a phone manufacturer to furnish a phone with a Nikon branded camera?
There would be some clear benefits. Licensing a code fundamentally amounts to renting out one’s reputation. Nikon is famous for a illusory cameras, and consumers would expected assume that a phone emblazoned with a Nikon name would take some good pictures. This could in spin boost sales, and Nikon would afterwards share in a profits.
Plus, there’s substantially no RD costs, and Nikon substantially won’t be a celebration traffic with manufacturing. Consider a new partnership between Hasselblad and Sony to furnish a line of luxury consumer cameras: Hasselblad didn’t need to worry about building a new camera complement from a belligerent adult — a association simply practical a code name and some oppulance touches to a line of already-built cameras.
But there are intensity hazards as well. Licensing out your code usually works as prolonged as people associate your name with an glorious product. If this suppositious phone camera didn’t accommodate expectations, Nikon would risk cheapening a brand, that could emanate a sputter outcome that would negatively impact a business in other sectors.
And since a phone would indispensably be a product of a partnership, Nikon would have a worse time progressing peculiarity control.
On tip of that, Nikon won’t be means to reinstate a mislaid compress camera sales by slapping a name on a garland of phones. For starters, a pierce would usually hillside in a tiny apportionment of a increase given a comparatively tiny purpose that camera peculiarity plays in a smartphone package.
Plus, even if a Nikon phone revolutionized a mobile photography universe with an 80 megapixel camera and immaterial sound during ISO 128,000, they’d usually be convincing some-more and some-more people to make a change from compacts to smartphones, exacerbating a initial problem.
Bottom line: code chartering might offer as a loss-minimization plan for camera companies, though it isn’t a surrogate for innovating in existent markets and exploring new markets.
Nikon understands this well, and a FM10 film SLR exemplifies this understanding. This simple, entirely primer camera is built by Cosina and formed on a Cosina CT-1 chassis, though it bears a Nikon name and is sole by Nikon. In this age of digital dominance, it is one of usually two film cameras still sole by Nikon (the other being a Nikon F6).
It’s a place holder, a minimal charity with low production costs meant to prove those few people still looking to use a classical SLR. It’s not meant to make adult for a decimated film camera market. In a identical way, a branded phone could keep a Nikon name applicable for snapshooters but requiring poignant investment on a company’s part.
So if Google’s Nexus 5 facilities Nikon branding — or Pentax or Canon or Olympus for that matter — a association would do good to put whatever kingship payments it receives into RD, since it’ll take something some-more estimable than a smartphone with a Nikon-branded camera to hindrance sliding profits.
Image credits: Photographs by developer.android.com and Joe Ravi
Article source: http://www.henleystandard.co.uk/news/news.php?id=1054936
Brand Licensing and the Nikon Phone
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