Surprisingly, I got a lot of email from China about my comments yesterday. Most of them all said the same thing: I'm wrong. That's certainly possible, maybe even probable, as my direct exposure to what's happening in SE Asia is sporadic at best. Certainly not up to the level of my experience in/with Japan.
So what was the point on which the responders said I'm wrong? The notion that the Chinese will be more like Japan than the US in their selection of cameras (small versus large). This was usually pointed out with some sort of anecdote coupled with a variation of "the Chinese want to show off their wealth and status, so they buy big."
I'm sure that's true in many parts of China. And it may be true of the visible middle class emerging in Shanghai, Beijing, and the other large cities. But my comments were based upon the actual sales numbers seen so far in China, and that suggests that smaller cameras are moving at higher than expected ratios to large DSLRs. "China" is a huge country with a very large population, and it's tough to generalize because what's happening in some cities is not the same thing that's happening in other districts.
It's possible that we're both right, that the current sales trend reflects price rather than size. Remember too that size is not exactly the same thing as price. The Chinese will lap up things like Leica M9's if I'm right, because it's a status symbol but it's not particularly large. Even an Olympus E-P2 should do well there, as it looks like a status/fashion symbol. You can have small high-end products. Note, though, that Nikon's statements specifically talked about emphasizing low-end DSLRs, which could be potentially construed to fit both views of what China wants, but probably misses on the "status" component necessary to win in China.
One thing that many who wrote also said: Canon's already there and highly visible, Nikon is not. Nikon seems to know this, but it's unclear yet what they'll do about it.
Regardless of whether I was right or wrong in my contention, I think my underlying point is still important: Nikon has a lot to do in China, and China will be an important market for them. What is worrisome is that Nikon isn't fully serving their existing large markets at the moment, so one hopes that China isn't a distraction that makes things worse in the other subsidiaries.