Taylor,
Well, I wouldn't hold a breath for Canon. They have had their share of failures. They're certainly a leader in digital camera market now, but how mature is this market? Is it going to stay the way it is now in 5 years? I highly doubt it. Just check what happened to camcorder craze.
And by the way, they did release couple "pilot" digital cameras that weren't exactly super great. D30 and D60 are prime ex&les. Sure, they were popular. But so were cheap Casio, Kodak, Pentax, whatever-else digicams, palm pilots, black berries, yo-yos with speedometer, you get the idea. It's a hip thing now. Every hip person must have email account, cellphone and digital camera. He can have an empty skull, but these three things are an absolute must-have
And now he also must have Segway, or at least boast that he rode one
Besides, Kyocera is in bad position for many reasons. One of them is they kept Contax as a purely niche market for all these years. They can't just cut the corner now and say, hey, look, we've got the most dazzling digital camera on the market! It even makes coffee for you!
That's why Olympus have pretty much quit competing with Canon and Nikon and now are trying to push their 3/4 stuff. Good luck to them, but it ain't gonna work.
Also, did you notice that there are two more companies that make digital cameras that accept Nikon lenses? That's a very important aspect, since it allows Nikon to get some additional share of the market that it wouldn't have otherwise. I'm talking about Fuji and Kodak.
And I believe that could cost Canon dearly when DSLR market matures, because as prices drop and feature sets become more or less standardized, it will get back to the same thing again - which lens should I use for this or that. And then people will have a lot more choice, since they will be able to use cameras from three different manufacturers if they're using Nikon lenses, or just one if they're using Canon lenses.
And by the way, couple years ago, Mitsubishi Motors finally acknowledged numerous significant safety problems in their cars. So, they had to have them recalled and repaired. Number of cars affected was in the millions. The problem? Mitsubishi kept "reassuring" their customers for years that all complaints about safety issues are baseless.
So, do you really want any reassurances from Japan-based Kyocera?
And by the way, where is Canon's reassurance that if I buy EOS1V today it won't be discontinued tomorrow?
See my point?
Good night everyone. Or good morning
Mike.