Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Who will buy the Samsung Galaxy NX camera?

I've read recently that the Galaxy NX camera is available in the U.S.A. for about US$1600.

Make no mistake, I'm not a fan of Samsung products.  I think the company leaves a lot to be desired in the operation of their products.  It's as though they have a checklist of features and as soon as they add a feature, working correctly or not, they check that line as completed.

They've become better since Google takes care of the backend of a lot of their products.  Without Android, they'd be as craptacular as they were the last time I owned one of their products.  They had indicated a desire to do things on their own with Bada but that failed, although it's probably being fed some money to keep the project alive.  From my viewpoint, they're just trying to keep the overall business in line with Sony and Panasonic and of course, to crush LG at home.

I've seen in the past that a few people went with their re-branding of Pentax dSLRs to make their own GX line.  They did okay because Pentax gave them some base code and the hardware.  There wasn't much to go wrong with doing some tweaks.  When I would say something about the GX line, someone would raucously defend their purchase, as if it was a life-or-death situation.  I've recently seen the same thing with their NX line.

NX--like Sony's NEX--they couldn't even come up with a series name on their own it seems.  However, they went on their own because Pentax wasn't going to mirror-less system cameras yet.  They filled out their mighty checklist and added features one-by-one until they had the perfect specification for a camera.  It's not that unusual in the electronics industry, and even related more specifically to computers and tablets, it's not unusual.  Sony obviously works from a checklist.

Samsung has created NX-series cameras in several generations, but they don't have much in the way of sales compared to Olympus, Panasonic, or Sony.  I'm guessing that the majority of their buyers have Samsung phones, tablets, and phablets like the Galaxy Note series.

That makes the Galaxy NX camera all the more appealing to that group.  They can use the connectivity in the camera to avoid depleting the battery life on their phones, tablets, and phablets.

However, is US$1600 too dear for the ability to take a photo and massage it using some Android-based app and upload it using another app?  Is it so convenient that the extra cost doesn't matter?  I've recently seen the NX300 for US$700-$800, which seems consistent with other brands with more lenses and accessories.  It's odd to think that Sony's NEX line has more support, given that they have churned out body after body but still have few lenses.  The only mirror-less system camera with fewer lenses is the Canon EOS-M with two lenses.

The only thing that would make this situation more strange would be for LG to make an alliance with a camera maker and start producing an Android-based camera of its own.

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