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tkpenalty: uses tizen, which can potentially use android apps... interesting.
Had a look at the code. Tizen. But did not find any signs of dalvik, OpenMobile ACL or *.dex files.
Boring.
Nathebeach: Smart move. As cell phone camera quaity approaches and surpasses some compacts, camera makers have to boost quality to give people a reason to spend hard earned money on a "second camera" (the cell being the first).
I am not talking about the pro-sumers and enthusiasts. I am talking about the target audience of people buying their first camera. Camera makers need to capitalize on that market. If they don't, they may end up like Kodak.
"To be fair, cell phone camera quality in general still does not surpass even the cheap compacts. Quite the contrary in fact; my four year old cheap Canon A1000 IS still beats my Sony Xperia acro S at ISO 100-200. At higher ISOs they are about equal."
But with f/2.0 lenses, they will reach those high ISOs later than the cheap compacts with lenses starting from f/3.5. Hence, beating.
ManuelVilardeMacedo: I don't mind if Olympus axes their basic compact cameras. They are probably OEM products rebadged 'Olympus' (at least part of them). Such products don't really add to the brand's prestige and their manufacturing has probably become a burden - especially now that everyone who takes snapshots uses a smartphone. A logical move.
Olympus had better concentrate on micro 4/3 and not forget the demand for new bodies from those who have large collections of 4/3 glass. They should face that they can't compete with the big names and specialize in what they do best, even if that turns them into a niche brand. By doing so they'll acquire more prestige than they would if they kept offering crappy point and shoots that nobody is willing to buy anymore.
But then there are non-photographic issues. Downsizing will mean contributing to the unemployment figures and the corporation's image hasn't the best reputation right now. A sizeable hurdle. As an Olympus user, I hope they can solve their problems.
"Could traditional aviation survive, if people discovered they could fly using their phones, and airlines had to ditch economy class and sell only first class tickets? Perhaps. But only with fewer flights, smaller planes, and higher ticket prices. Leica is a sort of "First Class Only" in the camera world,"
If camera companies were airlines, Leica would be an old steamboat. :)
historianx: What Oly should do is develop and release a bridge s/z similar to the Pannie FZ200 but with a 1" or 4/3 sensor and some sorta sweet 25-600 or higher constant 2.8 Zuiko Digital lens. Take that, Panny AND Leica.
"This suggest to me that the only way you could do a manageable superzoom with a 1" sensor and fast lens would be to go for something like a 16x zoom, MAX, and still it would not be small."
If it is fast only on the wide end (where it is needed most for non-sport-shooters), it could still be small. Look at RX100. There is a LOOONG way from there before it becomes too big and heavy.
historianx: What Oly should do is develop and release a bridge s/z similar to the Pannie FZ200 but with a 1" or 4/3 sensor and some sorta sweet 25-600 or higher constant 2.8 Zuiko Digital lens. Take that, Panny AND Leica.
"That's just fantasy! Look how a 28-280mm equiv. on micro 4/3 is big and heavy already"
New Panny 14-140/3.5-5.6 is not that big and heavy, integrate it in a fixed-lens camera and it will come well under weight of Fuji X-S1.
zodiacfml: I'm not surprised. Companies have milked the bottom end for too long without innovation and fought through it by lowering prices and just left it there. This story is not far from the serious compacts such as Canon's S, Panny LX, or Olympus' XZ. I don't find the point of having manual controls on a compact with image quality close to a cheap compact.
Or maybe, these companies left these compacts unloved to force people to buy on bigger and more expensive cameras for better image quality.
I don't know how much sales/profit Sony gets from the RX100 but it sure does get some love from consumers.
Image quality of LX7 and XZ-2 is not that close to cheap compacts, the difference (compared to, say, the VG-160 in the article, taking both sensor and lens in consideration) is from 2.5 stops on short end to 3.5 stops on the long end. Basically, you can do something in lower light (maybe not spectacular but good enough for computer screen) than daylight or you cannot.
AbrasiveReducer: As always, medical/scientific equipment to the rescue (the lack of which being what makes Nikon so vulnerable despite strong camera sales). But it's hard to see a path for Olympus. Low-end compact cameras are obviously a commodity and a phone is good enough for many. At the high end, Olympus, Pentax, Minolta used to be the poor man's Nikon or Canon but realistically, there's no D600 from any of these guys. That leaves the expensive, medium-sized camera segment which is pretty crowded.
Sales of D600 are minuscule compares to APS-C DSLRs, where Canon eats almost all the cookies.
http://i1266.photobucket.com/albums/jj524/picrumors/Bildschirmfoto2013-05-04um115727_zpsb7ac273e.png
historianx: What Oly should do is develop and release a bridge s/z similar to the Pannie FZ200 but with a 1" or 4/3 sensor and some sorta sweet 25-600 or higher constant 2.8 Zuiko Digital lens. Take that, Panny AND Leica.
With 1", not such a fantasy. Look how small the RX100 is. Surely there is plenty of weight/size budget for longer range zoom in a bridge form factor. Not constant f/2.8 to 600mm of course, but easily f/2-f/4 22-200 eq, which would be AWESOME.
thx1138: Here's a tip Olympus, be the first manufacturer to make a high quality water proof camera, with superior optics and RAW output and you'll take that segment of the market over. The IQ of the tough series is third rate.
"Here's a tip Olympus, be the first manufacturer to make a high quality water proof camera"
They were the first manufacturer to make a highest-quality-by-far water proof camera last year, which still has just one competitor.
Gesture: Good idea. So should a few others. The traction for Olympus is in Micro 4/3rds and all-weather cameras. Wish more had joined the Micro 4/3rds consortium.
Who said they dropped? They just released 3 lenses for that mount (A-series 19, 30 and 60).
win39: Olympus has been an occasionally innovative company with interesting ideas, but has never been run well even going back to the film days when they ignored autofocus and raised their prices comparing themselves to Leica. Upgrades came in decades so seldom got reviewed. They dumped all that and went for years without product to develop their first digital SLRs. The recent announcement that they are dumping their DSLR customers formalizing the reality of the last several years is history repeating itself while a newcomer like Sony surges ahead. This is just another segment being abandoned by Olympus.
"The recent announcement that they are dumping their DSLR customers"
Where did you get this? All rumors say a new E-series will be released this year.
PhotoHawk: Lets see now - the camera division lost 23B Yen - that's about $230M dollars (1 dollar = 100 yen) So if they stop making low end P&S cameras they still won't stem the loss. They may pare it down by about $20-25M but not outright eliminate it. And that savings is predicated on losses of $10 for every PS camera they eliminated assuming that loss on average for the 2.4M cameras they will take from their forecast (5.1M to 2.7M units).
So clearly they will need to do something else. And they already have made some fairly severe cuts. And they have already curtailed R&D dollars to the Imaging Division.
Unfortunately without some surprising products, something that will disrupt the market, Olympus's imaging division may be another future Kodak story.
PhotoHawk, your calculations are completely arbitrary. Nobody loses "$10 on every camera", you invest, say, $10M in new camera development and tooling (including overhead costs) and then sell cameras with some margin, if the number of cameras sold is big enough, you start showing the profit. For my example, if your margin is $10 and you sold a million of them, you are breaking even, if you sold just half a million, you just lost $5M. And that is what happened. And you basically have no space to lower price to generate more sales because margins are already so thin.
devlin2427: Olympus should've gone the Apple/Leica way a long time ago: very few high quality products priced at the limit of affordability/snobbism.
Trying to compete with giants with giants like Canon and Sony in the lower end of the market was going to be troublesome. I'm still surprised Fuji, Pentax and Samsung haven't abandoned this bracket.
marike6, Sony and Canon are basically the only ones who sell any P&S, the other sales are just blip, including Nikon. If Nikon camera division made any profit, it is from D800/D600/D7200/D5200/D3200/Nikon 1 and maybe bridge cams, not from sub-$100 P&S Olympus is eliminating here.
Just Having Fun: Smart move. P&S is a money losing sector. Others won't mind selling at a loss to keep name recognition, and Olympus can't compete that way.
marike6, and who get profit selling them? Margins on them always were thin, and now everybody reports drastic fall in their sales (meaning the fixed costs of their development are shared between fewer bodies, leading to losses) - see Canon statement for example too.
Although when Olympus and a few others exit the market, there will be a little more breathing room there.
I understand the VG-160 etc, not use. But, say, VR-340, 10x 24-240mm optical zoom in the package just of 125g, with stabilization, and all under $100. Smartphones cannot do that yet, although shows what is possible.
HowaboutRAW: And still no Samsung NX cameras.
And still nobody cares. :)
NZ Scott: The pricing sucks because the best deal is clearly the body + 17/1.8 lens and VF4. However, if you already own a viewfinder or the 17/1.8 (as I do) then that option is a no-go.
There's just no way I'm going to spring $1000 for a body only when $450 more would get a lens and viewfinder worth $800+.
The lens and viewfinder cost (don't know about worth) $450+279=$729.
raincoat: That's amazing. How does the extender flip out with just a switch?
"just a few lens elements in a bracket inside the barrel"
Not so few in fact, 8 extra elements in 4 groups. Some full lenses are simpler.
mother...