Is The 6-Month Product Cycle Upon Us?

Mark Goldstein writes "What is perhaps more interesting than the 4 new Konica Minolta cameras announced today is the rapid product cycle that seems to have been established by both Konica Minolta and other manufacturers." Rather than the yearly model updates that people have come to expect, the article notes that three members of this batch aren't even a year old, and one is only six months.

Re:Six month death spiral

[DZign]

ever checked car radio systems ?
models also change a lot and quite fast, while just the looks which have changed while the features are almost the same..
at least usually external cd-changers stay the compatible but if you have a changer of 2-3 years old it can be quite a task to find out with which current radio it still works (as I found out recently)

cheap cheap cheap

[A_GREER]

I think it ia WALL*MARTidous, everyone wants the best stuff cheap, companies are trying to meet the demand, but there are still a few people who want quality, look at PCs, dell==CHEAP, they sell zillions of units a year, vs. say aleinware, or apple who combined don even touch half of dell, but have MUCH better quality.

Re:I don't recall ever having yearly product cycle

[Otter]

Is this just an American thing?

On the contrary, it's particularly an Asian thing, both in electronics and in cars. The Japanese auto makers change things at the part level much more frequently than the Americans do, for example.

It seems like a lot of British and Europeans forget how much more connected the US economy is to East Asia than theirs are.

Re:Versionitis.

[_PimpDaddy7_]

The new 8MP cameras produce tremendous amounts of noise at low ISO.

For the price of these 8MP cameras, you can get the canon rebel digital or even the Nikon D70 and you have a quality digital SLR, ability to change lens, and excellent results at low ISOs.

I just bought a Canon 10D. As the parent said in this thread, I just need the lenses and this package will be good for me for years...

Re:Good for business

[Biogenesis]

It plays havoc with people wanting a linux compatible Wifi card as well. Basically no wifi manufacturer has released a card that at one stage had say a nice prism or orinoco chipset in it that hasn't changed it for something uncompatible like a Broadcomm or TI.

eg:
Netgear WG311 was an Atheros supported by the madwifi [sourceforge.net] driver but is now a Texus Intruments which is yet to have a stable driver (partial success has been had with this one [sourceforge.net], just not by me). At *least* Netgear had the kindness to call the TI version "WG311v2" and change the box slightly (documented here [netgear.com] it still makes it really annoying when you see "supported" next to "wg311" at places such as here [linuxquestions.org], then you buy one and find out it's changed from 4 weeks ago)

The (in)famous Linksys WMP11 used to be a linux-friendly prism but is now a Broadcomm or inprocomm (I think it's been both according to The List [linux-wlan.org]

Many other wifi cards have undergone such massive (I consider a chipset change massive) changes without there model numbers changed and it makes getting a wireless card for linux *VERY* difficult and frustrating.

Re:Versionitis.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Say what you like, but I'd prefer to have 7.2 MP for an 8x10 print. That is calculated at 300dpi. 200dpi is noticibly blurrier in a photo print (3 MP). If I keep the print at arm's length, it might not be noticible, but at half arm's length, it is obvious to me.

Re:Six month death spiral

[Cat_Byte]

name me one processor available five years ago that you would take over one produced today

Well if I were designing a satellite or space probe I would use a good ol Intel 486 processor. Low heat, low voltage, very reliable, and if the fan goes out...who cares? It is also more than adequate on speed since it takes much longer to actually do the mechanical moves than to calculate them. Same goes for calculators. Any old 80186 will work to crunch simple equations and maximize battery life.

Re:cellphones too?

[gcaseye6677]

The problem is, if you actually want to use an analog cell phone, you will pay an arm and a leg for the service and be stuck with a much older handset. These phones, although they were powerful and sounded great, had terrible battery life. Cell phone companies have no incentive to make better analog phones available to their customers since digital networks are easier to manage, and to oversubscribe.

Re:Versionitis.

[Japong]

As far as I know, there are no 7.2 megapixel cameras, at least not from any reputable manufactureres (Pine does not count). The old high-end prosumer cameras used 5 megapixel CCDS the 2003 and refreshes for those (Minolta Dimage A2, Sony Cybershot F828, Canon C8080-zoom) are now all using 8 megapixel CCDS, which is important for achieving magazine quality photographic prints (300 dpi) at 8 X 10. With that being said, the current crop of prosumer digital cameras are now enroaching into the price territory of the new amateur level Digital SLRs, most of which use CMOS sensors and have lower ISO noise issues. Most people willing to spend $1000+ on a digital camera are usually those with some passion for the industry, and would rather get the versatility of a dSLR rather than being locked into a fixed-lens prosumer design. I find the 35-420mm (35 mm equivalent) range of the newly-announced Dimage z3 to be a step in the right direction. A cheaper 4 megapixel imager combined with a 12x optical zoom puts it into a unique category (shared only by the Panasonic Lumix line), where amateurs can get into the digital photography field with an outstanding lens for significantly less money than a digital SLR. And with THAT being said, I'm going to go back and lust after the Phase One P25 digital back and Hasselblad H1... $29,990 + $6,000 with 80mm lens = 22 megapixels of medium-format goodness... a man can dream, can't he?

What? You don't own a mobile phone?

[wfberg]

Nokia expects to "launch" 35 new models this year. Thirty-five! And that's down from a projection of 40. Launching them 5 at a time as Nokia does, that means that their "product cycle" is less than 2 months.. And I still happen across shops that happen to have the phone I owned 5 year ago sitting quietly on the shelf, still unused in its original wrappings.

And they all do the same job. Whilst there's no shortage of potentially substantial features to be added, you can count the number of phones that support for example 3G on the fingers of 1 hand. The rest send text-messages, dial and play a game or two.

In truth, nobody needs all those new features. Bluetooth is very handy, and GPRS is nice for data (until 3G comes along), but you can already get all of that in last year's boring businessman-model.

These new models are all basically the same, or rather, based on only a few underlying hardware platforms. Obviously the N-Gage is different from your average teenager's phone or a smartphone, but within each type the variation is both endless and pitifully trivial.

Motorola was a master at this, they even kept older models in production by placing the new hardware with dumbed-down software in the older shell, adding a weight to keep the handset weighing as much as the old model(!).

The same is of course true of Digital Cameras. Each new model only replaces the CCD with a few more megapixels, or adds some software feature, perhaps changes the shell to something less plasticcy looking. The Olympus range is a good example. Or IIRC the Canon 10D which can be made to do almost all of the 1D's tricks, except take more pictures per second (due to RAM speed/amount apparently).

Re:Versionitis.

[Fweeky]

35-420mm? Yikes! "Outstanding lens" isn't just about focal length, it's about *quality*; everything I've seen about the Minolta Z range has not impressed me in this regard. The Lumix didn't impress me either; the chromic abberation I saw on pretty much every single shot almost made my eyes bleed :/

My Olympus C-750 Ultra Zoom was very nice, though, so it's not unthinkable to produce a decent UZ lens around this price range; I'd be surprised if they aren't simply pushing things too far in an effort to make for more impressive numbers though :(