I was in a leading French electronics shop yesterday famous for it’s good after sales support and while waiting for a clerk to become available to my questions, I witnessed to the following advice being given to a young lady looking for guidance on her choice for an entry level photo camera:
He said: Price wise and quality all cameras are quite similar as strong competition drives the market. However I would advise you to be careful if you want a Sony camera as it uses a branded memory card (the Memory Stick family) unlike the other cameras.
This is a well known Sony policy, from the times of betamax to the blueray PS3. However in this times and on this market, it is hurting sales and as digital photo cameras are ubiquitous it is also hurting core brand image. The Sony Memory cards cost at least double for the same capacity when compared with SD cards. Fujifilm had a similar market problem with it’s xD memory cards but recent camera models all have a dual slot type accepting both the expensive xD and the usual SD cards. Can Sony learn something from his fellow Japanese competitor ?
Will it learn ?
PS. This will come to hunt Apple too… but that’s not for today.
Dr. Adrian Mihalcioiu 08/2021
