Grevture
Senior Member
Ok, does not ring any bells here, but that could be correct.
Yup, it seem the oil spot issues has cost Nikon dearly. Initially (in the first months, before the issue surfaced) the D600 and 6D seemed to sell about equally well - and no, I have no numbers at all to back this up, just a comment from a product manager for Canon here in Sweden
I also had a conversation with one of the product managers here in Sweden in July 2013 about the D600, and he remarked the oil spot issue indeed had been painful for them.
Now, other factors are of course also at play (like Canon overall having higher global market share in DSLR), but my guess that issue does account for some of the difference between D600 and 6D.
And, to repeat something which has been said many, many times before - the D800 and the D600 are in their different ways the successors of the D700. Get over it and accept it. It's not like Nikon just left that market segment to die. They looked at how much better the Eos 5D Mk2 sold then the D700 (an it sold a lot better), and adjusted accordingly (upping the MP, adding a decent video function) before introducing the D800. And it is not like the D800 has been a failure. Again no numbers, just quoting from a local Nikon product manager (the very same mentioned earlier in this post) but according to him the D800 has outsold the D700 quite comfortably. And it still sell quite well considering it has been on the market for two years by now, and at least in our local market (Sweden) the price has just dropped something like 10% in those two years which is usually a good indication it sells well (the 5D Mk3 has dropped about 20% in the same time).
The D600 on the other has very probably been a big disappointment so far, but that to me seem more to be about poor QC then about choosing the wrong specifications and pricepoint.
But I really doubt your initial proposition of a D4 body with a 24 MP sensor would have any real impact. To me that seem like a rather expensive camera with no clear audience. As mentioned before I could understand a D800 like body with the 24 MP sensor and a reasonably fast framerate like 8 fps. But I doubt that would have made any significant difference to the overall market share either.
As far as a D400 (or a D9000 if Nikon will be consistent about four digits for DX models) I am a bit puzzled as well. The D100, the D200 and the D300/D300s were big sellers for Nikon, and not introducing a clear successor seem a bit odd. To some small degree the D7000 and more evidently the D7100 could be seen as filling that gap ... But it is a bit odd to not have a more high margin DX model when the previous ones sold so well.
But that is just not a Nikon question: Many Eos 7D owners seem upset Canon has not introduced a 7D Mark II yet. My guess is both Canon and Nikon put a higher priority on introducing a FF model in that price bracket - the D700 and 6D respectively.
Also remember that up until 2012, one big problem for both Canon and Nikon has been keeping up with demand. It is not like they have had much spare manufacturing capacity, which mean they probably have had to make some tough prioritizations among models. To me the introduction of the Df seem like a message they now have production capacity to spare for more then just the top sellers in each segment. That could be good news for a potential D400/D9000.
