You may call this article an essay, an opinion, or a rant. I hesitated to post this on Photograph IO because this article is probably way too biased for the blog (sorry Nikon owners). Don’t say you haven’t been warned. 😛
Why do some companies flourish (Fuji) while others went bankrupt (Kodak)? How important is market share when it comes to brand equity and customer retention, if at all? These are all questions that I asked myself following the whole Nikon D600 scandal that was finally resolved recently.
When the Nikon D600 was initially released to the public, tests done on the sensor of the camera model revealed that there was a dust/oil problem with the shutter and sensor. Despite many complaints from users, Nikon did nothing at all to help existing D600 owners, telling them instad to clean with a “rocket blower” and never acknowledged officially the problem. Instead, Nikon quietly released a newer model, the D610, a year only after the release of the D600 that magically fixed the problem and added a meager 0.5 FPS increase from 5.5 FPS to 6 FPS. Unusual? Indeed. Of course, they justified that the D610 was made because their customers wanted a “faster burst rate”. Sure, the D610 is an excellent camera on its own, but they way Nikon acted is very disrespectful of existing D600 owners. As one of world’s largest camera companies, this is utterly disappointing. The folks over at Nikon thought they could get away with the issue by covering it up and totally ignoring ethics and customer service. What a joke.