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From comments here, you can see the field of premium photography equipment is about to undergo some kind of massive disruptive consolidation and reorganization. Almost anyone who comments here is a prospective customer, yet we see so much fragmentation. Some customers just ask for a box with a great sensor, and plan to process the images elsewhere. Some ask for a retro-experience, or an open source photography platform, or an incremental improvement to existing products. Some ask for a high-end consumer experience like a Smartphone, or tighter smartphone integration. Maybe a smart equipment company would organize its products around those markets, instead of struggling to segment too finely using old concepts of cost and performance.

The traditional photography equipment business is in a world of trouble because, as others point out, software is replacing physics as well as the familiar mechanical human interface. This requires a lot of expensive software engineers and some computer science expertise, and the rate of change is only increasing now. For example consider how machine learning is affecting image processing, like this method of pixel-based image synthesis: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aayushb/pixelNN/. Having lost the low end, DSLR companies can't amortize the cost of ambitious engineering projects over any significant volume of inexpensive products. Agree with the article by Thom Hogan - if anything it doesn't go far enough to convey the extent to which top line camera companies are out of touch with how the digital world has changed.