Nikon Jetisons Firmware Development for New Nikon + Fujitsu Joint. WTF?
Nikon Spins-Off Firmware Development
Strange… Worrying… Do you know what your precious D3x without good firmware? Yeah- it’s expensive, Italian-designer industrial art.
That’s why I’m a little concerned that Nikon is making a joint venture with Fujitsu to engineer future firmware. It really makes you wonder what’s going on.
The only scenario I can think of that makes sense is:
Software development for devices like this is always a loss-center: you sell the camera, but then you have to upgrade the firmware and you don’t get any more money for it. So if you spin off that cost to a different company, then you’re basically getting the liabilities off your books and the MBA’s are probably telling them that it’ll help the horrible revenue/profit numbers that have been coming in. In addition- you can now hire yourself out, openly, as happy to make firmware for whomever wants it and try to generate some revenue from it.
There may be other reasons, but this scenario or similar ones are the only thing that fits.
The only easily accessible link to the press release is at dpReview.
Tags: firmware
July 13th, 2009 at 23:01
I can think of a couple of similar reasons why they might do this.
1. Create a new company that effectively bypasses stodgy management to be more flexible and faster responding. The Japanese are noted for finding ways to work around managers that have one foot in the past, maybe both.
2. Cut overhead. Similar to your idea, the software company is not saddled with a high overhead which results from having the deprecation of multiple factories, advertising, etc added into their operating cost. This way, they might show a profit.