The part that remained single-user like iView-Expression-C1Media Pro has almost disappeared, though iMatch is still around. I'd be surprised if PM go after the first market, which is viable but crowded, while the second makes one wonder why CameraBits think they can succeed where other strong players like Microsoft and PhaseOne failed.
There is also Photo Supreme and Neofinder/Abemeda, with a reasonable number of people bemoaning the loss of Media Pro. And Daminion and Mylio?. The main failing, I think, was that Phase One never really put any effort into it, just as Microsoft hadn't before them. From day one, it was difficult to find it on their website (Phase One's) and the user guide was never included in the Phase One documentation pages. Bugs went unfixed, and it needed a major rewrite to let it run with upcoming Mac OS's.
The obvious target market of C1 users looking for a more robust DAM than C1 offered were disappointed because of poor integration, and existing users of iView Media (such as myself) continued to be disappointed because, just like MS, Phase One did virtually nothing to update the program, and it seemed that Media Pro was only a stop gap until they progressed their real interest of adding a DAM feature to C1.
I think Camera Bits are in a different position, they are small specialist company selling a niche product to a niche market, with a product (PM5) well overdue for an upgrade. Like many PM5 users (I'm assuming), I would be upgrading to PM6 even if it didn't add a DAM. And they may well pick up some Media Pro users, as well as users looking to try an alternative to one of the few remaining single user DAMs.
But Camera Bits presumably have their own problems as more and more people are probably just using LR etc to do things that PM does. I bought PM4, not because I was the obvious market, but because I found LR unusably slow for culling and image management. But, I still find it such a useful "swiss army knife" of file ingestion and management that I wouldn't want to live without it now.
The other question is whether it will be a "proper" DAM that also catalogues audio files, Word files, PDFs etc, or will it be a specialist photographic DAM.
It seems reasonable to assume it's a small market, but given Camera Bits existing product, and its user base, plus the reputation of the company within the industry for this type of program, I'm not sure that a comparison of how well Phase One and MS did with a DAM, is a good indicator of how well Camera Bits will do with PM6. And of course, taking on your point, the market is likely to shrink as most users are probably looking for an integrated DAM/Raw Processor, which is increasingly becoming the standard with most raw processors, either already available or on the way.
Any way its apparently going to be available as a public beta soon, so I look forward to seeing what it has to offer.
Cheers,
Graham
