I think where it's gets sticky is that Sony has separated their imaging sensor business into it's own corporate entity and setting themselves up to be the "Intel of image sensors". This includes building a bunch of fabs to support global scale manufacturing and entering into many contracts with clients and customers that are competing with the separate business entity that is Sony digital cameras. Also a customer. Sony imaging sensors and the parent company have been making lots of money on the sales of all imaging sensors regardless of what brand body they were put in and has over built their fab capacity to support far more than any one customer. There's likely lots of contract language dealing with the impartiality of the imaging sensor business that could get messy for them. On the other hand the up front capital to build all those fabs is immense and loss of many major customers would carry a huge price tag. I don't think you can look at this as one business entity as it's not. I don't think they can just "change their minds" on a whim.
What we don't know is if these contracts are up with lets say Nikon. Im sure Sony does not want to break up these existing contracts but going forward they will set up new contracts and if Nikon buys in than thats the deal. There is nothing wrong with this. Times have changed since the D800. Be it Sony as a big sensor manufacture that does have pretty much the whole market than Nikon has to make a decision to buy or not. But good luck finding another high tech CMOS sensor in full frame to buy.
Mar 19, 2017 at 09:28 AM
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