The question a good market scouter would ask himself is not what camera people want today -as today is too late- but which one they will want tomorrow. This talent is the like of answering a question that has not yet been asked.
As I said, I am just guessing. However, I still attempt to use logic in my reasoning, even if I am guessing.
One must first attempt to answer the question - what market does the micro four-thirds camera appeal to?
First of all, in the
digital market, there are three types of buyers. Casual, enthusiast, and professional.
The casual photographer uses point-n-shoot cameras, and they are generally not that interested in image quality. Yes, they want 'good' images, but they're easily swayed by marketing gimmicks such as high megapixel counts, anti-shake, big zoom, face detection, and so on. They have options at every price point, manufacturers are scrambling to differentiate themselves in some meaningful way from one another, and the market is indeed saturated - sales have been declining along with the global recession.
The enthusiast uses higher-end point-and-shoot cameras with manual controls and good lenses, as well as dSLR cameras. The more esoteric of the enthusiasts use digital rangefinder cameras and the like, but they are a minority - a subset within a subset.
The professional uses dSLR cameras pretty much exclusively. There are always exceptions, but for the most part, they're hauling around Canon or Nikon digital SLR bodies and big expensive lenses. They have a lot invested in their equipment and they are not likely to dump what they're using unless it just doesn't work for them. The annual sales of dSLR cameras have not plateaued, according to the latest sales figures I'm privy to. They continue to rise, even with increasing competition and a bad economy.
The way I see it, four-thirds and micro four-thirds is aimed at the enthusiast market. This is a small market segment already. And they are not selling into a market that has held off buying digital cameras - this group has digital cameras already and regularly buys the latest greatest.
So the market for micro four-thirds is meant to cut into the enthusiast's purchases of point-and-shoot cameras and to some extent, dSLR cameras.
This means that a camera manufacturer selling the micro four-thirds (or other small-camera/big-sensor cameras) must try to avoid cannibalizing their own sales of high-end point-and-shoot cameras, if they intend to continue them.
Canon has had such a camera with the G9/G10/G11. The micro four-thirds camera aims directly at the people who would otherwise be interested in that camera. So I would imagine that Canon would not be interested in m4/3 unless they intended to drop the G series.
That's just one example. Overall, I feel the market for m4/3 is somewhat limited, and there are only so many pieces of the pie to go around, unless the entire market for p-n-s higher-end cameras is going to go away.
I also consider what I can see with my eyes. I go to the local Best Buy, and I do not see any m4/3 cameras. I don't see any at the local camera store. I don't see any being sold at retail at all. That tells me that the average consumer is not the market.
We often make the mistake, because we associate with other enthusiasts, of assuming that we are the market, or that we are 'big'. We're not the market, and we're not big. We're a tiny little drop in the bucket - an odd lot of quirky enthusiasts who represent diddly-squat in terms of sales to manufacturers.
I like the m4/3 concept, and I'd like to see it continue to grow and see new products introduced - I'm not against it at all. I do think that the market for m4/3 type products is limited and will saturate fairly quickly. Nikon has never made a decent competitor to the G10, for example, because Canon has it sewn up, and the niche itself isn't worth enough money to Nikon for them to seriously go after it.
As to the Sigma DP1 and DP2, regardless of what you might think of their capabilities, they are of the genre 'small camera / big sensor' and so I included them in my off-the-cuff analysis.
