traditionally the japanese sw back end of even good products like canon and nikon have been nothing more than "basic"
taiwanese & Soko have been even more basic
cheen has been kind of nonexistent other than using open sw to achieve their ends
in the new era suppose DSLRs become increasingly sw centric like the samsung galaxy camera already is pointing the way...suppose you can download ur own ROMs into DLSRs, put apps there and such...i wonder how nippon plans to cope with such changes....it would appear samsung is better poised there and even apple could play a new move by pairing with someone like olympus or pentax for the mechanicals and optics and doing the back end hw and sw. or maybe pull in carl zeiss to play on the american fascination for german made products.
the smaller P&S cameras are already vanishing inside smartphones if one is prepared to tolerate a slight bulge there for a better camera module. MP has reached 8MP even in mid range cams which is plenty enough..matter of time before bigger sensors come online...with 5" screen as the new std, internal volume is no longer as tight.
picasa type features are already inside phones, more sophisticated irfanview and pshop will follow.smaller lower margin japanese and other east asian cos will secularly benefit by supplying the 'picks n shovels' and 'plate of beans and bread' to the miners like housings, optical modules, chipsets, screens ....
and skype ? they do have plenty of enterprise and service provider players.
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