Nikon responds- "rapid deterioration in the market occurred and fiercer competition"

I believe Thom Hogan recently described Nikon's recent quarter as "holding market share in a decliing overall dSLR market".

The D300 upgrade is ridiculously long overdue which is certainly a missed revenue opportunity.  Who knows if it will ever happen.

Then, Nikon will just forfeit the majority of the amateur sports/action market.  Customers who shoot action and aren't in the D4 price range are voting with their wallets and not buying the D600 or D800 because they don't meet their needs.  It also doesn't help that there's no new DX camera for action shooters either.

Nikon suffered some serious brand damage from the D800 issue and right when the D800 could have been the hottest FX body they've ever introduced, a lot of market/sales momentum was lost because of both the actual D800 problem and how they handled it.  There was likely a significant permanent loss of D800 sales because of their snafu.

No company who is meeting all their sales goals offers such wide reaching rebates.  This is a sign that Nikon needed to do something significant to pump up sales.  The declining Yen may have helped make these rebates larger or more affordable to Nikon, but it seems unlikely that the Yen is the only reason for these.

A company's reputation is seriously affected by how they handle a crisis and that effect lasts a long time (influences their brand perception).  I can't find anyone who thinks Nikon's handling of the D800 focus issue was even close to good.  Their brand and sales were affected by how they handled it.   They consciously chose to try to hide the problem and minimize possible new product returns or warranty repair claims rather than proactively addressing the very real issue and showing their customers that they stand behind all their products, that they've corrected the issue and offering concrete steps for any existing owners or inventory in the pipeline.  Even today, the market is not confident that you can go anywhere in the world and buy a D800 with no focusing issues because Nikon never really explained the issue or what they did about it.  The used market is forever tarnished (which affects long term cost of ownership).

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John
Gallery: http://jfriend.smugmug.com