Now the conversation has become very thought-provoking. Aus, I've appropriated two of your headings in your previous post...
Bluetooth
I am trying to imagine a day when it would be possible to "beam" my digital photo into my PC or directly to my printer via Bluetooth. Would I prefer this to removable flash? The answer would have to be dependent on the speed and reliability of the wireless transfer. Remember that we are talking photos in this case, not exactly the kind of data that you're willing to tolerate a lot of loss or noise. Also, as digicams increase in resolution (I recall that increasing the resolution produces an exponential or logrithmic scaling of the memory required) the data files will be much larger for transfer. Bluetooth transfers at 725 kbit/s and may be subject to a variety of environmental conditions that may impact the reliability of the transfer. I am NOT going to sit there beaming my files for more than a couple minutes - tops! This would not be preferable. This setup might be ok for a digital voice transmission that we've all been conditioned to accept static and dropouts on, but - c'mon - not on the naked pictures of my girlfriend! However, in a perfect world where wireless transmission is fast, secure, and reliable - I would have to say that I would prefer it over a hardwired connection. Wireless would simply be so much more convenient. BUT I think that we have years to get to that point, nevertheless IMHO all SNDK longs should consider the very long term disruptive impact of perfected wireless data transfer.
Cost & Design Considerations
With respect to the Bluetooth discussion above, I have read that Bluetooth enabling devices will increase prices $70 more at retail. Most digicams seem to be shipping with 8-16mb cards, which are cheaper than that. Flash allows the OEM's to control their unit prices better, which gives CF an advantage over embedded flash. Nikon could ship the Coolpix 990 with a 192mb flash card - but that would add hundreds of dollars to the price, so it ships with less. Certainly a camera capable of over 3 mp of resolution deserves much more memory. Using embedded would require installing a respectable amount of memory because consumers would demand it, and that would build in a much higher cost per unit. Removable CF allows the OEM to ship the cheapest capacity and bring their unit retail price down, while the consumer can then choose what size card they ultimately need/want and do a follow-on purchase. That is absolutely great for SNDK. Virtually any digicam of 2.11 megapixels or better should be an automatic two CF sale one with the OEM, and one at retail.
Repeat sales
Now my question is: how many flash cards will I need? I am a gadget junkie, but now that I have a 48mb CF in my Coolpix, I have yet to take it out. I shoot my pics, then hook the camera up for a download and clear the card - ready for another shoot. Now this will all change since I just got my SanDisk Imagemate USB reader - but here I will just be taking the card out to download it and clear it. Then it goes back in. From there I would archive those naked pictures of my girlfriend onto a CD-ROM - CF is still way to expensive to justify using it as a backup. CD's cost less than $0.50. So why do I need another CF card? Sure if I have another device, i.e. cellphone, Palm Pilot, I would most likely have dedicated CF for each, but would I need more than one per? The question I'm leading up to is this: How strong will the demand be for CF beyond the initial purchase? And how important is removability?
This post is chock full of opinions and conjecture - take them at face value. I'm not an electrical engineer, nor have I made millions in the stock market - yet. I am long and very bullish on SNDK because I can't help but believe that removable, non-volatile, low-power memory that fits in the palm of your hand will change the world. I'm just not sure of all the ways this will happen, and perhaps the true "killer app" for CF has yet to emerge. I'm basically asking some questions out loud from a compact flash consumer standpoint and for a dialogue to allow me to understand the size of the potential market better.
This has been my longest post on this thread, I hope someone finds it useful.
MK |
