Originally posted by Just1MoreDave It could be worse. Some business genius could invent a "subscription model" for the camera industry, like what is creeping into the car industry. For only $12.99 a month, they'll turn on another 10 megapixels.
In the car industry the idea is to streamline production to one or very few hardware variants. Like: it is cheaper to produce all car seats with el, heating, the choice to have heated seats in your car becomes a paid option and an activation , but not a hw variant. With the added advantage you can buy/activate it later or get it for a monthly subscription fee...(which is choice capex-opex for buyer, and a way for producer create a recurring revenue - in current context of shortages in supply chain: there would be revenues without even building new cars during stalled production due to shortages or pandemics....
In electronics, IT, telecoms there is a shift in value chain to software (with updates, new features) away from hardware (generic, cheaper and powerfull enough). Software becomes Subscriptions. Think like Microsoft Office or some postprocessing photo software....
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So we could imaging having one camera body being sold as fullframe K1markIII, or in cropped mode K3markIV or K70markII, features like HDR or pixelshift by option payment, or get the sw AND upgrades covered by monthly fees (like new added KATEN image profile...?)....
Looks like for the camera it's feasible soon: cropped mode exists, adding features too, they just need to create a subscription model...
Only lenses will stay hardware... I mean you can program an ultra zoom ( like 17-300mm) to behave like a prime or a standard 17-50mmm but the image quality won’t be a prime experience , nor a 17-50 f2.8 fixed caperture low light lens...
Maybe lenses need more time to evolve into
Trilobite-Inspired Camera Boasts Huge Depth of Field | News | Communications of the ACM or into this
'Lensless' imaging through advanced machine learning for next generation image sensing solutions .... before it becomes sw features...
The future is
bright software subscription and option packs...