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You are damned right they have a risk aversion. They probably even have an entire risk assessment department!
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I think this is a product of the economics of a large corporation.
I helped start a subsidiary for a Fortune 5 company in 1995 that we grew to 600 employees and a multi-billion dollar business. Then Corporate changed directions and shut that company down (repurposed the employees.)
We VP's would have loved to buy the company and run it, we could have make a few million per year. But we would have been competing directly with the parent company, and they were looking for profit in the realm of $1 billion to $2 billion from each unit. They could care less if we were able to bring in $5 million or $10 million. It was totally irrelevant to them.
It is the same thing here. Canon is looking for category leading products, in every market worldwide. They aren't going to devote scarce internal resources to a product that might sell 10,000 copies, when they have 3 others in the pipeline that will each deliver 150,000 to 2 million. It's a fact of life in a large company.
I see so much emotion involved in this all over the web, every time a new camera comes out. It gets a bit tedious. A little morte professional and business analysis would be useful - there are reasons for thethings that happen, and Canon is still by far the largest camera company in the woprld. Us? Well ... by comparison ... not so much. ;>)
I posted elsewhere, I had a Kodak 14n full frame 14 MP on pre-order at 3 places in 2002/2003 when it was first announced. It looked great on paper! Unfortunately, it had some issues when it first came out that limited it's use to 25 ISO, shots with no aliasing, moire, etc. They continued to tweak it over teh next 2 years, and some folks were able to make great images with that camera.
Canon announced the 16 MP 1DsII about 6 months after the Kodak started to ship, released it 2 months after that. The 1DsII was a truly great all around camera. Perhaps still the best that I have ever used in some ways (out of 35+ cameras I have owned - Mamiya 7II, 645, 4x5, etc.)
We will ghet trickle down of 12 bit, 4:4:2 and 4:4:4, RAW, Canon Log, uncompressed HDMI out from the 1DC, C300, C500 as the hardware becomes less expensive. There are also a lot of things that are firmware based. Hopefully either Canon or ML will deliver some of those this year yet.
I actually am **hoping** that Canon has not yet released their "video centric" camera for this cycle. The 5D3 is obviosly a very core "photo centric" product. The T4i is an entry level product with some of the features that we will see on the next video DSLR.
I hope that the rumoured "entry level" full frame camera that is expected this fall is more focused on video. Unfortunately, ther D800 may force Canon to release their high MP camera this fall, and defer on a video DSLR to winter or spring. Too many launches already in the wings. We will see ...
Of course, we also have their camcorder division.
Cheers! No offense meant, just my 2 cents.
Michael