5. The growing pains

As it has become the case, it is always difficult looking in from the outside at what goes on in any camera maker much less know exactly how Olympus actually thinks. There are things outsiders cannot understand no matter wherefrom or how you are looking at it. That is why it was such an irritation to read some of the forum threads on the Internet.

No camera maker makes decisions that are purely technical. Much as some people like to think, there are crucial economic factors that had to be considered. Almost every nuance of a competitive DSLR camera is a closely held secret and its development is often cloaked even from within. And as for the final name for the E-1 replacement, not even engineers in the R&D Division knew until the eleventh hour. Decisions in the deliberation of a high-end DSLR camera are therefore a mix of reasons. Principally features are there to perform or to deliver certain functions but do not be surprised that there’s far more than meets the eye.

Olympus’ survival over the years without a DSLR in sight is owed to its huge base of compact camera users – a market segment that the company has led for decades. It is no surprise that despite the competition, it has held its own. However the increasing influences from the use of electronics and computing technologies have also paved the way for digital cameras to join cell phones, watches, PDAs, and game consoles (and more to come) as devices that are essentially computers in disguise. And this literally changed the complexion of the camera industry overnight and a change of guard within the market took place. With dismay out went some of the most revered camera names and in came the electronic consumer appliance giants.

In the time it took for the industry to weather the ravaging pains of change, Olympus were also forced to take different strategies – strategies that would point the way back to the DSLR eventually. The digital compact camera market was burgeoning because more people were buying but profitability was also thinning out as the ‘battlefield’ widened and deepened at the same time. A relatively ‘small’ company like Olympus was facing enormous market inertia problems caused by shifts in consumer trends. Technological ingenuity wasn’t enough, as the company discovered, because traditional buying values (eg lens optical quality) were fast being eclipsed by on-paper numeric superiority in the form of megapixels and also lifestyle-oriented preferences.

An individualistic and innovative company like Olympus moving against convention was fast becoming increasingly impossible. And as unlikely as it was then, even a second wind didn’t help an astute company like Minolta. In the end its merger to become Konica-Minolta could not stop it from its eventual demise. As one merger failed, others emerged. Pentax worked closely with Samsung and then later Hoya Corporation’s hostile takeover sent tremors that were felt throughout the industry. Nikon continued to be linked closely with Fuji in the background. German lens manufacturers were coming in with numerous ‘joint development’ ventures with Sony (Carl Zeiss), Samsung (Schneider-Kreuznach) and Panasonic (Leica) leading the way. You can expect more of the same happening in the very near future.

So where was Olympus amidst the evolving winds that were sweeping across the industry?

If you have the answer to this question, you will certainly know a whole lot more about the E-3 than anyone in the industry or what the Internet can ever tell you. The gestation period of the E-3 codenamed EP-1 was as difficult as it could have gotten for many reasons. One of them is the nature of Olympus itself. Had it been a company less adventurous, less maverick-like in nature and one that follows the conventions of the market, the E-3 would have been birthed a few years earlier and by now even its replacement would be here but it wouldn’t have been an ‘Olympus.’ As it were, the company’s history didn’t prepare it well for what the company had to go through.