A couple of things I wrote in the past week seem to be prompting repeated emails, so perhaps I'd better clarify those things.
First, why did I predict that Nikon will drop the D800 and only make the D800E? This has to do with prices. With sales softening enough on the D800 now that we're about to see a significant discount appear in the US, things get tricky for Nikon. Nikon uses new product to reset price points. The D800 reset the original D700 price point (US$3000). But the D800 isn't likely to be updated for quite some time (three to four years if we use the D700->D800 process as a guide). Having it slide in price in less than a year would predict it would have to slide in price quite a bit over the course of its lifetime. Nikon's typical lifetime slide is 25%, thus a D800 that should hit US$2250 in 2015. But Nikon wouldn't want it to do so before then.
The D800E shouldn't really cost Nikon more to make: it's a lower volume production, which is why they charge more. The other reason for the E in the lineup has to do with video. I think Nikon thought that the D800 would become a go-to video camera, replacing the 5D as the poor man's Hollywood camera. The fear was that the E would trigger too many motion artifacts.
But people are buying the D800 models for their still abilities. They were the hot model this year because they basically gave grade school bragging rights to landscape and a few other photographers ("nah, nah, I can print bigger than you.").
What I'm predicting is that Nikon will figure out that by making only a D800E, and making it US$3000, they will be able to prolong the price point. This looks like a US$300 drop in price in the E model, but it's effectively a US$200 price increase on the D800 from where it will be in a couple of weeks. Everyone wins ;~).
Second, we have my prediction of a D7000 replacement before the D300s replacement. This is the opposite model that Nikon used for the FX roll-outs (highest priced first, lowest price last). I'm not sure that the FX roll-outs were dictated by a pricing strategy, though I'm pretty sure that Nikon has discovered that this did indeed cause people to overbuy with the D800 when they probably would have been happy with a D600 had they known it was coming.
There are three possibilities:
- D7000 replacement comes first, D300s replacement next.
- D300s replacement comes first, D7000 replacement next.
- The next DX camera is a replacement for both the D7000 and D300s.
My prediction obviously rules out #3. It's certainly a possibility, but as I noted in my predictions, I don't see how Nikon keeps unit volume up with a reduced model lineup. Nikon's goal in DSLRs is to have the largest market share, with Canon second. Reducing model lineup is a tough way to get there, as it would put more pressure on individual models to sell in even higher quantities than they do. Note that the D3200 is already on instant rebate (as is the V2 the day it shipped; what makes me think the D5200 will be on instant rebate the day it ships in the US?). So, if Nikon is doing #3, I would change my prediction: they'll end up with lower DSLR sales in 2013 than 2012.
So the question is whether #1 or #2 is correct. We have two additional data points to examine:
A. The D300s does not have an instant rebate
B. The D7000 has a very large rebate and price drop
Now A could be that Nikon stopped making D300s models quite some time ago and they think they barely have enough quantity to make it through until February, when the next DX camera should appear. Some US dealers think this is the case; more than one has indicated to me that they think NikonUSA has virtually no stock of D300s models. But why the sudden and urgent change that triggered B? B looks more like "model clearance" to me than A.
Of course, both A and B could support a #4 option: Nikon launches both a D7000 and a D300s replacement in early 2013. I'd find this unlikely for one reason: both products would be produced by the Thailand plant, and both would require a fairly high number of units to be produced to even launch. Only twice in DSLR history has Nikon attempted a simultaneous Thailand launch: the D50 and D70s, where the D70s was a minor update to a product already being produced; and the D3000 and D300s, where the D300s was a minor update to a product already being produced.
So, in evaluating the likely scenarios with some of the information I do have coming out of Thailand, I ended up with the following order of likelihood: #1, #2, #3, #4. Good thing I numbered them that way ;~).
It certainly is possible that #2 could be the correct choice. At the moment, though, there haven't been any rumblings that usually accompany the high end product launches. For a February launch, there'd be a name pro using a D300s replacement already, and it would be hard for it to be kept quiet that a replacement was near just from the logistics involved. All I can tell you is this: I haven't been approached by Nikon to use a new camera ;~). Of course, if I was, I'd be absolutely silent about any speculation on Nikon models and not doing predictions. (Technically you can't do predictions if you actually know for sure.)