Thom Hogan Predictions

[MarkBarbieri]

Thom Hogan is a Nikon writer. He has started publishing annual predictions about what to expect from Nikon next year along with an assessment of the other players in the industry.

Here is his latest set of predictions. Overall, he foresees a bad year for the market leaders, a potentially good year for Sony, and a really bad year for the smaller players.

 

[boBQuincy]

Sony is in a bad financial situation now after losing about $3B on their PS3 and probably another $1B on Blu-Ray. If Blu-ray does not start to do better than 4% market share (and I don't think it will) it could be a really bad year for Sony.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I had to correct several people earlier this year when they said that Blu-Ray had "won" the HD format war. All we know so far is that HD-DVD lost. Can you remember who one the SACD vs DVD-Audio format war for high end audio?

I think that HD video is the future, but it is not clear to me whether Blu-Ray will really become a significant factor in the market before video-on-demand services start to take over. I know that I won't start distributing home made videos in BR until the price of blank discs drops. $15 for a blank BR disc compared with $0.30 for a blank DVD is a bit extreme.

 

[alan]

Agreed. Add to that the fact that an awful lot of people don't see any significant benefit in BluRay as compared to DVD (I mean regular Joes, not techy types) and I don't think that I'd want to have a lot of money invested in companies reliant on BluRay for their futures.

regards,
/alan

 

[Code]

I read this on Engadget HD today:

A recent study by market research firm SmithGeiger found that out of over 2,000 surveyed, "HDTV owners familiar with Blu-ray favor the format over downloading and streaming by a margin of nearly 10-to-1, with about 70% of respondents citing the fact that there's a physical disc to keep as a key factor in their decision to buy Blu-ray." It also found that 96% of BD users were "familiar with downloading and streaming services, but that two-thirds believe watching a movie on Blu-ray is a better overall entertainment experience."

Also BluRay's market share is around 10% lately.

 

[YesDear]

I was hoping BR would be a survivor and it would take off. I will be honest, I have a 1080p upscaling DVD player from OPPO that has a high quality chipset in it do the upscale from a standard DVD and the picture and sound is amazing. DS brought his PSP3 over and we compared some BR vs upscaled DVD and the results we very very minor differences.

I guess Sony may have finally won a battle to just lose the war, again!

 

[fitzperry]

I read this on Engadget HD today:

A recent study by market research firm SmithGeiger found that out of over 2,000 surveyed, "HDTV owners familiar with Blu-ray favor the format over downloading and streaming by a margin of nearly 10-to-1, with about 70% of respondents citing the fact that there's a physical disc to keep as a key factor in their decision to buy Blu-ray." It also found that 96% of BD users were "familiar with downloading and streaming services, but that two-thirds believe watching a movie on Blu-ray is a better overall entertainment experience."

Also BluRay's market share is around 10% lately.

That's interesting. I'm not very techy, but I'd rather download. At least I know where it is that way. We have 3 DVD players in our house and one mobile one, but we use them very infrequently (actually, we watch very little tv). It seems like I can't ever find a DVD when I want one. Plus, DVDs get scratched and take up physical space. My dh has an Archos (sp?) and downloads a lot to it.

 

[Code]

I was hoping BR would be a survivor and it would take off. I will be honest, I have a 1080p upscaling DVD player from OPPO that has a high quality chipset in it do the upscale from a standard DVD and the picture and sound is amazing. DS brought his PSP3 over and we compared some BR vs upscaled DVD and the results we very very minor differences.

I guess Sony may have finally won a battle to just lose the war, again!

Interesting.. I have a nice upscaling DVD player also, but it literally hasn't been used once since a few weeks after getting HDDVD (oops) and now BluRay, the difference to me is huge (but I also have a huge screen, probably has a lot to do with it). Honestly if something is available on DVD but not BluRay yet, we just wait to watch it. Hello my name is Code and I am an HD snob!

 

[orchjoe]

I have to speak on BR! Sorry to highjack the thread Mark!

I like Blue Ray ( I have a BR drive in my Desktop). There is something to say about High Definition. I think that BR will stand a chance if they get ducks in a row in regards to Player profiles. (some players use 1.0 and some us 1.1 and others use 2.0).

Like what was said above, the cost to burn one BR is way too much than it should be. Companies need to start investing more money on manufacturing products (Even though sony will have a 1B shortfall, the potential for BR is very good).


I do predict as much as I like BR. Online streaming content will probably take over BR as long as they can get at least 1080p content over the net. A lot of people will adopt the new tech if there is more development in that area too.


OK.. I bet this will be a slow year for the camera makers too!

 

[MICKEY88]

Sony is in a bad financial situation now after losing about $3B on their PS3 and probably another $1B on Blu-Ray. If Blu-ray does not start to do better than 4% market share (and I don't think it will) it could be a really bad year for Sony.

it might be a bad year for Sony overall, but I think the article was just about the cameraa end of things..

 

[Groucho]

I don't think that there's any question that Bluray will continue to do fairly well. It will never replace DVDs, but it's already proven itself to be much more successful than the high-end video product of not that many years ago (laserdiscs)...

IMHO, those who don't see a clear and obvious difference between DVDs and Blurays are not watching on a decent television. Even the difference to 720p is glaringly obvious to me, and 1080p is just that much more so. Then there's the higher quality sound, more features, etc. The "upscaling" DVD players are a total crock, don't get me started on them.

Bluray burners have also fallen in price faster than DVD burners did, IIRC. Bluray burners can easily be had for $250 or less nowadays. The media is still a little pricey - but then, dual-layer blank DVDs are still unreasonably priced.

Online steaming will never be a real replacement - again IMHO. You need extremely fast network connections, and not only that, you need your provider and every network connection inbetween you and the provider to have massively fast connections. Lots of people have fast connections now but there are rarely taxed - if people started streaming full movies every night, it would certainly cause big jumps in bandwidth usage at the provider end, who will have to invest money in faster connections to continue to provide acceptable speeds. Furthermore, even with fast connections, the data has to go through very heavy compression in order to be small enough, and that means worse quality picture. (This is to be expected - my standard-def DirecTV channels are much worse than they used to be, for example, because of increased compression.)

FWIW, I did just pick up a Playstation 3 (and Microsoft paid me $100 to do it, thank to the live.com eBay deal - take that, Gates!), but it's only hooked up to a "little" 27" Sony standard-def TV. It'll be a little while longer before I've got the spare bucks to upgrade the living room TV. Good thing for the home theater with 104" screen and Bluray in the HTPC, even though the projector is only 720p. In the meantime, Little Big Planet is still pretty great on a regular TV, but HD will definitely help!

 

[DVC Jen]

That is too bad - but not surprising. I will be doing my part to help out Canon in a few weeks - if they ever get the 5DMll out.

 

[drcandon]

Even though I own Nikon now, I have fond memories of my Olympus OM2n...great camera very very lightweight for a full featured SLR..it would be a shame to see Olympus go belly up..

Nikon definetly has the market share on globa paper, but here in Canada with no rebates on Nikon material and Canon being discounted heavily by Future Shop..I understand Canon has the lions share here with Sony a close second - again because of the Sony Store and Future Shop..

As far as Sony goes I went with a PS3 because with then new firmware updates I can now stream or play from recorded DVD all the various Divx and Xvid files and it will upscale them..yes I have an Oppo and it will do it as well, but the proc in the PS3 can handle the little glitches in coding better and the voices never fall out of sync. Also the PS3 is now up to profile 2.0 with the latest firmware. The Ps3 has some things it can't do as compared to a regular bluray player, but as Sony has realized with bluray sales being slow the PS3 is the way to market to get everything you need..I did not buy the PS3 for its gaming ability - although that is okay but for the other stuff it can do as well..

Panasonic has the weight of the Matu****a company behind them, so no matter that they produce they have the money to weather the storm ..if it ever ends...

Now in Canada as far as streaming video is concerned we do not have the infrastrure that some of you guys in the US do.....a lot of internet users here are still on dialup...please don't tell me you want to watch highdef on 28.8 or 56 K...

Oh yea as far as bluray burners go Future Shop just dropped the LG BD burner to $199.00...so I am one my way to get one..and yes this is a BD burner, not just a reader..

 

[MarkBarbieri]

When I brought home our PS3 and showed a movie to my wife, she was non-plussed. She agreed that it looked much better than a DVD, but she wasn't willing to go back to fiddling with discs when she wants to watch a movie.

When we buy movies, we load them onto a server and add them to our video selection software. We can watch any of them from any computer or TV in the house. The notion of having to go back to keeping track of discs, putting them into the player, figuring out the menu, and then finally getting to watch the movie was not worth the benefit of extra video quality to her. That's why I think that Blu-Ray is the last physical format and may never fully replace DVD (I think the laserdisc analogy is a good one).

Someday everyone will expect to be able to pick their movies (or other entertainment media) from a menu or search screen and watch them. Having to deal with media will be a thing of the past. I'm not sure if the shift will take place in the next 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years, but I'm pretty sure that it will happen. I expect that I'll have a very high speed internet connection almost anywhere that I go someday in the not to distant future.

Now that the problems with loading Blu-Ray movies onto a server have been solved, we've started buying Blu-Ray discs for some movies. It isn't always worth the $10 premium, so we still get some DVDs. Once we have them loaded onto the server, we can also make versions for the car (where the low-res screens don't need Hi-Def quality) and our portable video players. It is still clunky to have to buy a disc, transfer it to a computer, and make different versions for different devices. I'm looking forward to the day that I can go to one place, select the show I want to watch, and enjoy it.

I still don't have a Blu-Ray burner. For personal consumption of our videos, I want them on the server anyway. As for sharing with other people, the $15/disc cost is way too high. I give away DVDs all the time because they are nearly free. I'll start burning Blu-Ray discs when they get down to a buck or two in price. If that doesn't happen, look for a competing standard that uses H.264 on a DVD to supplant Blu-Ray. I've tried compressing Blu-Ray movies down to 4.7g using H.264 and the results are pretty good. I'd be perfectly happy distributing a .MOV, .WMV, or .AVI file. The limitation is that some people don't have computers hooked up to their TVs and few (if any) DVD players understand HD video files.

 

[boBQuincy]

The limitation is that some people don't have computers hooked up to their TVs...

They don't?!!! This reminds me of when I visit someone's garage and they don't have air tools. For me and most of my friends it's kind of an expectation.

Back to Blu-Ray, from what I read a lot of Blu-Ray players won't read burned discs, that's a deal breaker!
http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=365&tag=nl.e539

Back to the topic, I am not a fan of Sony, they have a history of dumping products and leaving the consumer hanging. They also are not primarily a camera company like Nikon, Canon, Pentax, etc. In the P&S world they might have good market recognition but for SLRs I do not consider them to be as well respected.
It's nothing against Minolta, that was all I used in the film days, but when a company decides to bail out of a product line I do not care to invest a lot in their system any more. To me Sony still has that double whammy of an uphill battle against them.

 

[ukcatfan]

I have a little different prediction for Pentax than Mr. Hogan. I think they will chug along just b/c they do not seem to care that they are not competing for #1. I believe they are relying on Samsung to place volume into the market for the mount. It has not necessarily happened yet, but I believe they are going to attempt a bigger surge and more models in the somewhat near future. They have already increased their market share in compacts. They just have not really tried much here in the US yet, so we do not think about them. Pentax is just a division of a larger company now and cameras are not the true heart of the company. Basically, they can take a hit there and not go out of business. On the other hand, bad things in other parts of the business could bring the camera line down along with it. Also, if Pentax gets too financially weak or sick of making cameras, Samsung will pick them up in a heartbeat. I would prefer to have another Pentax in my future, but if it ends up being a Samsung, so be it.

 

[Groucho]

As far as Sony goes I went with a PS3 because with then new firmware updates I can now stream or play from recorded DVD all the various Divx and Xvid files and it will upscale them..yes I have an Oppo and it will do it as well, but the proc in the PS3 can handle the little glitches in coding better and the voices never fall out of sync.

You've had better luck than I, I watched one xvid avi on the PS3 and it was out of sync. I have a couple DVD/Divx players but mainly use a modded X-Box (original) with Xbox Media Player, that is by far the best for playing back video/audio, however the relatively slow speed means that the resolution can't be too high. But other than that, it is great - enough so that I'm up to 3 of them, I bought two for $25 and one for $50. Not bad!

The biggest problem with ripping Blurays to a PC server is sheer size. I mean, if you go and rip the Cars Bluray, that's 50 gigs! You can make a very presentable 720p version that'll fit on a one or two DVD-Rs but even with a fast PC, that's a lot of time spent processing it.

If you are buying Blurays, you may already know about the deal at Deep Discount right now... 25% off their already low prices on all DVDs and BluRays. I'm putting in my order on Tuesday (waiting for Hellboy 2!) and will be getting Wall-E for $20.87, Sleeping Beauty for $20.12, and the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy (6 Blurays!) for $41.14! Not too shabby at all.

Re: Sony dumping product... in some things, sure. But in the game arena, they've supported their old consoles longer than just about anyone else ever, with some PS1 compatibility even with the newest PS3, and PS2s still available with new, quality games being released. Compare that to Microsoft, who immediately stopped producing the X-Box once the 360 came out, effecting killing a system that certainly could have soldiered on as an economical option for a few more years. Now the PS2 still sells great and the X-Box has basically had no new games for a couple years. Point being - who knows, maybe they'll soldier on in the camera arena, too.

I'm not worried much about Hogan's predictions. Gee, companies selling consumer electronics may face a tough year in 2009? WOW! Stop the presses! I doubt we'll see anyone disappear, though I would guess that Olympus is certainly the one I might expect to be in the most danger. The idea of a Four Thirds "standard" certainly hasn't happened (Panasonic doesn't really seem to be trying very hard with their DSLRs) and they're left with the fewest available lenses and most of the really good ones are very, very expensive... and of course, the smaller sensor means that they will always inevitably lag behind in high-ISO sensor noise. The "micro 4/3rds" is interesting but I'm skeptical as to its success in the marketplace.

That being said, I doubt they'll go anywhere, at least in the next year or two. Heck, even Sigma will probably still be flogging their own DSLRs at the end of next year.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I doubt we'll see anyone disappear, though I would guess that Olympus is certainly the one I might expect to be in the most danger. The idea of a Four Thirds "standard" certainly hasn't happened (Panasonic doesn't really seem to be trying very hard with their DSLRs) and they're left with the fewest available lenses and most of the really good ones are very, very expensive... and of course, the smaller sensor means that they will always inevitably lag behind in high-ISO sensor noise. The "micro 4/3rds" is interesting but I'm skeptical as to its success in the marketplace.

That being said, I doubt they'll go anywhere, at least in the next year or two.

IMO (FWIW) I don't think Olympus will be in trouble, either.

*Besides* the whole, cameras been around since 1919 and Zuiko lenses since 1936 thing, they are a world leader in medical imaging - microscopes, endoscopes, etc, and in fact enjoyed record sales in 2007. They're committed to growth and innovation in their camera division as well. They may not be so popular around these parts but they are quite popular in Europe and Asia, and I've been reading lots of reports of "other" users buying them as carryarounds because of their portabilty and great glass.

And from what I've seen in digital photography over the last few years, predictions haven't been awfully accurate, anyway.

We shall see.