Ken Rockwell SLAMS the A55

[OneGuyKs]

BF is just trolling for attention. I don't care what he writes. a55 got best reviews everywhere That bothers BF because A55 is going to be dashing success once stocks start flowing at normal rate.

[2tallpaul]

Sony has had to do something different from canikon as if they continue producing me too products (even with all the exluded put in) they are not going to big sellers and I suspect Sony would pull the plug
With the A33/55 Sony are shaking up the dslr Market with something new and the traditionalist don't like the break with norm.

I suspect Sony will sell more A55 than the "traditional " A580

Regards

Paul

[twm47099]

I suspect Sony will sell more A55 than the "traditional " A580

Regards

Paul

Particularly when:
- The glossy Sony advertisement direct mailing last week and today's Sunday glossy insert lists the NEX, SLTs, and A390 but doesn't even mention the A580.

- The Sony Stores in the Annapolis - Baltimore area have the A390, NEX, SLTs, A850, and A900 on display, but no A580.

- Ritz stores in local malls have Sony products similar to what's in the Sony Store (but also no A900 along with no A580)

-B&H (probably the largest retail camera store in NYC, and a very popular web store) shows the A580 out of stock (again). At least that's an improvement over last week's "Announced, not yet available" notice. (although this could mean that the A580 is so popular that they can't keep them in stock :^)

- I don't even think we have to mention Best Buy.

- A posting on dpreview had a statement from Sony Canada that said they did not intend to import the A580.

So I'd say, if some one wants to lay money disagreeing with you, go for it; you will win.

When even the manufacturer doesn't advertise or display or intend to sell their own products the week before Christmas, it raises the question if they even want it to compete, much less succeed.

I can see Toru going into the boss' office -- "Boss-san, it is like I said it would be. OVF DSLRs do not sell."

tom

[bakubo]

I can see Toru going into the boss' office -- "Boss-san, it is like I said it would be. OVF DSLRs do not sell."

I am !

[Jasper_D]

I can see Toru going into the boss' office -- "Boss-san, it is like I said it would be. OVF DSLRs do not sell."
tom

LOL!

[bfitzgerald]

Sony are pushing the SLT's hard and esp the A55 I have seen quite a few ads in magazines and on tv. In comparison the A580 is getting very little exposure in the press or media.

Not really hard to work out what will sell better.

[Greg Beetham]

I can see Toru going into the boss' office -- "Boss-san, it is like I said it would be. OVF DSLRs do not sell."

tom

That's a classic
Toru could possibly add, "Isn't it a good thing we didn't make very many"
Greg

[agorabasta]

I think the problem is the US market itself (together with some other countries). It simply never was the largest part of Sony DSLR business. So the shortages in the US happen even with the SLTs, not to mention A580.

They may wish to win more of the US market, but they still have to serve the currently more important to them parts of the world prior to the US.

[Greg Beetham]

One would have to ask the question. Why after five years, Sony has not been able to make the US market one of it's main markets for DSLR's ? it is after all one of the biggest markets in the world.
Greg

[agorabasta]

The best market is the one where they can attract more new customers, more first-time DSLR buyers.
Now is the US such a market? I don't think so.

Then if and when they release some 7-series cam, the US market could get much more attention. There would be more upgraders, and some of those could be cross-system upgraders. That would be the chance for Sony to make their best effort in the US.

[David Kilpatrick]

US wholesale and retail margins are too low - 5, 10 per cent. Europe offers much better retail margins, 20-30 per cent. You can generally count on the retail price of an item in Europe being at least twice its landed cost before duties. That's not the case in the USA so although it may be a large market, it's a low value per item. This is made worse by the cost of advertising. A typical trade magazine/consumer magazine page costs a major name like Sony between £500 and £1000 in the UK (which is the lowest value advertising market in Europe, in fairness - costs in Holland or Germany for example are around four times that of Britain). In the USA advertising costs thousands of dollars and sometimes tens of thousands per insertion, not hundreds or at the most thousands.

So unless something can be really be shifted in very large quantity and one a one-size-fits-all basis, Europe represents lots of tiny low cost markets with very fast response and high margins.

I do not know how this relates to emerging markets like Russia, India, China, SE Asia, S America.

[Greg Beetham]

I just cast my mind back to the Nikon D40, apparently they sold in huge numbers in the US; what was so wonderful about the D40? It wasn't such a great camera but there were plenty of customers for it just the same. What did Sony have at that time? the much more expensive A300 and A350 from memory, and the A200 possibly. The impression I got was that most large outlets had Sony DSLR's to some extent but didn't bother with them unless someone specifically asked for one, they seemed to mostly stick to selling Nikon and Canon.
That says one thing to me, the knowledgable representation of Sony products from Sony was very poor, and marketing by Sony themselves was just as bad. I saw numerous threads elsewhere through that period that said that even Sony Style stores staff by and large didn't know much of anything about DSLR's or photography and their presentation, representation and availability of the products was quite poor.
How can a company make an impression in the marketplace if they just coast along oblivious to reality, and don't do anything to address the issues. In Sony's case they just decided to not bother much with the biggest market on the planet because it's all too hard?
The other issue as I see it is Sony failed to address issues that were important to photographers that did know where the A-mount came from and were willing to support it.
Sony has proven to be very bad at supplying accessories and fixing things that needed fixing, they also have missed the boat with numerous opportunities, the A700 was one, it could have put Sony on the map as a serious camera maker, but Sony snatched defeat from the jaws of victory there as well; releasing such an important camera with a bad NR in RAW engine was mind boggling, the D300 followed just a few months later with a very similar sensor and had no such defect...
And now what's the latest escapade by Sony, they appear to have done something with the flash system that causes a bad delay in taking a photo with system flashes.
Greg

ps. I see David has been busy.. but David other camera companies seem to be able to get in the US market and get their share, why couldn't Sony do the same?

[agorabasta]

I really can't understand how the retail market functions in Russia. E.g. a simple web search for a580 in Moscow reveals 77 offers from retailers that have both brick&mortar shops and internet order business claiming to have a580 in stock. If pure internet retailers are included, the total retailer number climbs to 177. That's in Moscow, one single city. And AFAIK, all the first 77 really do have their own inventory, and many of the internet retailers do as well...

It seems to be a huge and lively market, don't know if it really is, though...

Then try to find a brick&mortar camera shop in Miami, FL... and then look for Sony there.

[David Kilpatrick]

Sony consistently misunderstands its market even in the UK. The A580 body only was oversubscribed in pre-orders in the UK - massively. It looks as if the majority of all sales were body only. But Sony only had kits with the 18-55mm lens. After two weeks of stalemate with dealers being sent kits that no-one wanted, unable to sell them, when customers were waiting for bodies, Sony finally gave permission to dealers to break open the kits and remove the lenses.

This causes all kinds of problems with the VAT-back and warranties, as the kit has a single serial number for warranty purposes, but they were forced to do it. I got my body-only order in a kit box with kit documents.

But - in the UK their margins are high enough to manipulate the price, and the offers, over a wide range during the rollout. So they have presumably either taken back the 18-55mm lenses or will allow dealers to sell them at a very low price. Not seen any yet. Nikon did this with a stack of D90s which had 18-105mm lenses, when the 18-200mm was launched. The dealers refused to buy in the new kits because they had unsold stock of the 18-105mm kit, but no-one wanted it. So a lot of white box 18-105mms appeared for sale at about £150-160 because Nikon did some kind of deal to help retailers out (I bought one).

David

[agorabasta]

A580 18-55 kit starts at about $880 in Moscow, Russia. The A580 body only starts at about $850. That diff is less than price tolerances between individual retailers... And then most Russians don't care of such peanut diffs anyway. And it seems to be the Sony policy to price the lenses inside the kits at peanut values.