Punditry, Woo Hoo

This is an industry piece, fair warning.

Here we have Thom Hogan in full voice but as always it's a bunch of nonsensical words that say almost nothing.

He starts off reciting some things that are obviously true (shrinking market implies closed businesses and consolidation) and then, incredibly, says it's not true because of the differing goals of the camera companies. This is absurd on the face of it, we really needn't read further. If the market is shrinking, the listed consequences are inevitable. To argue that the consequences will not occur, you need to (successfully) argue that the industry isn't undergoing a radical shrinkage.

Then he goes on to detail the differing goals of the camera companies. Buried under the avalanche of words, peppered liberally with various derogatory and occasionally racist remarks, the differing goals of each company as stated by Thom can be summarized as:

Canon: retain customers, gain market share within a shrinking market.
Fujifilm: retain customers, gain market share within a shrinking market.
Leica: retain customers, gain market share within a shrinking market.
Nikon: retain customers, gain market share within a shrinking market.
Olympus: retain customers, gain market share within a shrinking market.
Panasonic: retain customers, gain market share within a shrinking market.
Pentax: retain customers, gain market share within a shrinking market.
Sony: retain customers, gain market share within a shrinking market.

It's anybody's guess what P1, Hasselblad, and whoever the other players are have for their goals in Thom-land.

Then he goes on to connect back with his first statement and shows how the differing goals explain how there won't be any closures or consolidation. Err, no, wait, actually he doesn't. He just re-asserts it and hopes you won't notice that his argument is quite literally non-existent.

Man, that's some insightful analysis. I supposed I should be over my astonishment that logorrhoea is often mistaken for analysis and insight on the internet, but so far, I remain astounded.