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Prior to his death, Steve Jobs sought to transform three more industries: textbooks, TVs, and...
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Friday, June 1, 2012, 11:54 AM ETPrior to his death, Steve Jobs sought to transform three more industries: textbooks, TVs, and photography. Apple (AAPL) is already making its presence felt in the first, and its plans for the second are the subject of constant rumors. Now a source tells iLounge Apple is working on a high-end point-and-shoot iSight camera. However, the site, which also notes Jobs' interest in photography startup Lytro, labels its comments as speculation.
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This news story has 9 comments:
Not too many were surprised by this news, which surprised me. The joys of living in Western NY. Three Mile Island to the south and Kodak to the north!
Have a great day.
I think the photography part is already completed. FIgures from upload web portal Flickr indicate the iPhone as the most used "camera". Meanwhile camera makers are starting to abandon point & shoot cameras, in part due to the influx of smartphone cameras.
Apple did have a few cameras in the 1990s, including some of the earliest digital cameras. They were never very popular.
Google has yet to see much traction from interactive television. This is the supposed direction for Apple to take. The downsides are that Vizio kills margins amongst existing competitors, and that people do not buy televisions as often as they do smartphones nor computers. It would not be a steady revenue stream due to the slow upgrade cycle and mature market status. Until 2K and 4K systems start to replace HD, there is not much reason for people to buy one HD system over another, other than price.
I have no idea whether Apple actually wants to build a standalone camera, but if they feel they can create a truly differentiated high-end product, then I don't see anything in their history or current product line that would keep them from doing it.
Panasonic has a lens partnership with Leica, another well regarded optics maker. I haven't seen indication of a Panasonic smartphone with a Leica designed lens, though Panasonic do make rebranded compact cameras for Leica.
http://engt.co/JSU33e
Samsung is moving away from point & shoot cameras, in favor of more high quality system cameras. They previously bought the camera division of Pentax.
Olympus is having some major financial problems, and many buyers have been rumored. If Apple was going to surprise the markets, they could buy the camera division of Olympus, then allow the medical devices division to go to Fujifilm, who recently expressed an interest in just that part.
Nikon and Canon lead because they are long established brands with a history that users value. Their cameras are quite good, and the new Nikon 1 system has been likened as the Apple of compact interchangeable lens cameras. Sony mostly gained ground from Zeiss, and that they make some of the imaging chips for Nikon. Panasonic has yet to leverage the Leica connection, while Samsung has made little progress from high quality German optics design from Schneider. With all that in mind, I don't think an Apple logo is enough to make a dent in cameras the way Sony did, especially with almost no respected optical companies left to partner with on that important part of the design.