As it turns out, the megapixel war has moved from the Nikon D800 to the Nokia 808 PureView. Yep, a cellphone. A cellphone with an enormous sensor (and a Zeiss lens). The new sensor measures out relatively close to the Nikon 1 sensor (about three quarters the size).
Of course, if you had to upload those 38mp images, even in JPEG format, via your cell phone service provider, you'd be paying for one heck of a lot of data transfer. (Wait, 38mp? Yes, while the sensor is 41mp, the max image size you can produce from it is 38mp. It's a multi-aspect ratio sensor.) A single image would chunk out at about 17MBs, which means your 1GB wireless plan would get throttled at about 60 images.
But here's the kick in the seat of camera maker's pants: Nokia has built in something called PureView, which allows you to do digital zoom and crop, or to downsize to 2, 3, 5, or 8mp image sizes to get better low light performance. All both during and after capture and without clumsy menus or procedures. Hmm, why doesn't a D800 have that? Well, it does, sort of, via the old kludge menu-driven, procedural RETOUCH menu options and JPEG and crop sensor image sizes. Can you say "lack of imagination?"
We're at a crossroads of a different kind: it's the old DOS versus Windows thing all over again. The camera companies are still producing DOS. The cell phone and tablet makers are all heavy into the Windows side. For the same reason Windows eventually won on personal computers, so too will it win on cameras. The problem I see is that so far every last little bit of touchscreen and modern UI use on a camera I've seen is follow-the-leader: the camera companies are imitating things that others did on other devices long ago (makes you wonder whether they're ignoring patents again). Where's the UI that originates with a camera maker? Doesn't exist. Japan's camera makers are not driving the lead car, they're tailgating.
Still, you also have to wonder whether Nokia has gotten too ahead of the curve. A 41mp camera in a phone means that the phone really needs 64GB of storage. The choices are tough: you either pay more for all those pixels (storage, transfer, etc.) or you just don't take very many pictures.