Year End 2011

It's almost the end of the year, 2011. Most websites will do two posts:

1. The year in review
2. Forecast for the next year

I'll save you time and money, but first the important part:

The year in review: don't you already know it? Didn't you live through it? In anyway in the big scheme of things, a lot happened, especially natural catastrophes that we still live with the consequences even today (I'm talking about photography):

• The tsunami in Japan
• The floods in Thailand

Not much happened on the camera side, neither Canon or Nikon upgraded their work-horses. Canon has announced the 1Dx. Nikon? We are still waiting because they are waiting on Sony to supply them with the CMOSes, the DSPs… Most of the “big” Japanese companies are still trying to recover from the tsunami and the floods. The Micro 4/3rd was supposed to explode and take over the world, it didn't happen but the idea of expensive point and shoot took hold with Nikon 1, Sony NEX, Fuji X100… Who says there's a recession? People are willing to spend on the toys that they want.

Not much happened on the software side, Adobe has not released any new version of Lightroom, Photoshop… Many smaller companies have released stuff like Photomatix…

Some major revolution happened on the web, in no particular order:

• Flickr struggles to stay alive within the Yahoo group
• The fulgurant rise of Google in the social media field with Google+ after two previous failures
• Facebook's domination of the family and friends photography
• The umpteen try by big media to steal and control photography. Their latest try is SOPA
• The weeding out of many photography websites
• The birth of many new photography websites
• The simplification of the Internet
• The death of Adobe Flash. Adobe has announced that they will not support Flash and develop Flash for the mobile/tablet medium. If you rely on Flash, time to look at other solutions before it's too late. The unknown is when will Adobe stop providing security updates?
• The news media do not need to send reporters, photojournalists… to the “hot” spots, an iPhone is good enough as seen in Egypt, Lybia, Syria… and they don't have to pay.

For the photo industry, 2012 will likely be a better year than 2011. New products, new software, people around the world, except for Europe, are starting to spend again on new hardware and on some services.

• Canon and Nikon will deliver new pros and pro-sumer cameras, whatever their new name/designation will be. The problem is that these cameras were designed in 2010 and to be released in 2011.
• Adobe will be releasing Photoshop 6 and Lightroom 4 with this or that new, must have or else, feature. When? Either in February or in May. Why? Because Adobe's fiscal year ends on 3-Dec of that year. The quarters ends 3-Mar, 3-Jun, 3-Sep, and 3-Dec. They usually release their software a month before the end of the current quarter, so they can book the sales in that quarter.
• Will Microsoft buy Yahoo? What will that mean for Google and Google+? Microsoft's Bing is already 32% of the search market and it's slowly rising.
• Facebook will cause big headaches for photographers once it goes public with its IPO expected in the spring of 2012 (unless there's a stock market crash.) Facebook is in the process of separating businesses from people. Photographers will need a paid business account to use Facebook, the process has already started but has not yet reached the photographers.