I think we take for granted the strides we have made in electronics over the last couple decades. With globalization we are witnessing a problem that I am not sure we thought about while dreaming about the future where our toasters are our best friends and do our laundry.
Over the last week just about every major digital camera manufacturer has issued "service advisories" on their CCDs (the chips that actually do the imaging) - long story short, they are admitting that their products may fail miserably with no warming. The reason for this is simple, they ALL are using the exact same CCD made by Sony in their cameras. So far Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Konica-Minolta, Ricoh, Fujifilm, and probably some more I don't know about have issued these advisories over the exact same chip. Obviously this is not all models from these manufacturers, mostly they are the less expensive consumer models but check if you own one of these brands.
Why are all these companies stuffing Sony CCDs in their cameras? What happened to competition and innovation? I read not too long ago that there are only three manufacturers of LCD screens for TVs and monitors. Three? Why only three? There must be twenty or thirty brands selling them and some of those are major companies.
Microsoft claims that regulation will kill innovation but I am beginning to think that "business" will kill it more. If it somehow makes more sense for all of these major camera manufacturers to license and purchase chips from one company then innovation has already been killed by business. How boring to think that Sony is going to be the only company innovating. Maybe we all will be using minidiscs soon.
Posted by dmason at October 14, 2005 10:47 AM