where there’s smoke there’s fire

I know, you are not interested in Coolpix cameras, but this new article on Nikon’s website gives an interesting inside look of how Nikon designs a camera (ok, a Coolpix camera in this case). Some quotes:

“First, our marketing department constructs a product lineup and then they create the concept for each individual model. Naturally, camera designers actively participate in the development of product concepts. Once a general product concept has been determined, a team of designers is selected from the design department and serious work to come up with a design that satisfies the determined concept begins.”

“The first step is to create mockups from those sketches. This happens more than a year before the product is released. At this stage, we examine a wide variety of possibilities.”

“Each design team is comprised of two to five designers.”

And finally a quote from the last question about the future of the Coolpix design:

“As advances in mobile devices such as cellular telephones continue, we are beginning to see the fusion of digital cameras and such devices on the market.”

Did they say again “mobile devices” and “cellular telephones”? Remember this quote from Nikon’s president Makoto Kimura?

“Nowadays digital cameras take movies, performance of cameraphones is rapidly advancing and demand for simple movie cameras for uploading video on the Internet is on the rise. Redefinition of photography may become necessary.”

How about the news that Nikon is looking for partnership with online and mobile device companies?

Do you see a pattern here?

BTW, yesterday Samsung announced a new Wi-Fi point and shoot camera that can upload pictures and video to social networking sites, send emails, etc.