> I believe that Nikon could do its current
> owners a big favor by giving us an insight
> into its plans for the 35mm SLR system for
> the next 5 years.
No way.
Once you publish a plan, you'll catch hell if you try to
change it, no matter how obviously misguided the plan
turns out to be. Disclaimers about the plan being 'tentative'
have no effect. If you put it in writing, people will hold
you to it. With the changeablilty of the marketplace,
publishing a long-term plan would be suicide. If you
change your plan and provide what people want, the
bitch at you for changing the plan, if you don't change,
they bitch at you for not giving them what they want.
Besides, if they say that they're considering some super-
duper new functionality for a future release, brand X will
release it before they do. Nikon won't release anything
until it performs to pro specs, others manufacturers aren't
so careful.
If they decide some new functionality is NOT worthwhile,
brand Y will come up with some marketing plan that
makes it sound like it's the greatest innovation in camera
technology of the century, and put ads in every major
magazine about how Nikon's can't do this but our cameras
can . . . .
Publishing a long-term plan would be like handing your
worst enemy a loaded gun and saying "Here, shoot me."
> For example, they see the nice USM motors
> on most of the lenses and wonder if Nikon
> will continue to extent SW motors into
> other lenses such as a 28-105, 70-300,
> and 300mm f/4 lens.
The answer depends on how well the new AFS lenses
sell. If everybody looks at the new AFS lenses and says
"Oooh! How wonderful! That's truly a lens worthy of the
Nikon name." and then goes out and buys a non-AFS
Nikkor or a Sigma because the AFS costs too much, Nikon
won't put a lot of effort into converting other lenses to AFS.
-Don
