Often wondered this too. Japanese hardware is still good, but difficult to compete on price compared to Korean/Chinese.
They have great developers, and have had for a long time, but it feels like the corporate structures themselves are too rigid to allow innovation to surface.
You know these companies are doing something wrong when hobbyists have to reverse-engineer their firmware to get the functionality they want and need (I'm looking at you Canon and Panasonic). Sony is not much better, the user interfaces of their hardware feel 10 years old and the recently opened "app store" for their cameras is a joke, with no SDK or 3rd party apps available. As they focus away from TV's to cameras and sensors, that's something they should definitely fix if they want to succeed.
The best thing these consumer electronics companies could do is open source parts of the firmware/software and engage more with consumers who are taking a more active role in developing products these days.
Comments
Often wondered this too. Japanese hardware is still good, but difficult to compete on price compared to Korean/Chinese.
They have great developers, and have had for a long time, but it feels like the corporate structures themselves are too rigid to allow innovation to surface.
You know these companies are doing something wrong when hobbyists have to reverse-engineer their firmware to get the functionality they want and need (I'm looking at you Canon and Panasonic). Sony is not much better, the user interfaces of their hardware feel 10 years old and the recently opened "app store" for their cameras is a joke, with no SDK or 3rd party apps available. As they focus away from TV's to cameras and sensors, that's something they should definitely fix if they want to succeed.
The best thing these consumer electronics companies could do is open source parts of the firmware/software and engage more with consumers who are taking a more active role in developing products these days.