In essence, the Japanese companies are pretty good at mastering the part of the ecosystem that you hold in your hand (camera, lens, flash). Beyond that? They're not doing the things that are necessary to make a complete ecosystem thrive. And that's particularly true at the global level.
Of course, even within that hardware bundle that's in your hands there are now signs of problems. It's a dirty secret that a lot of the internals of BIONZ, DIGIC, and EXPEED are licensed from others. But consider this: Apple is now running six 64-bit cores and matching GPU at about 2.5Ghz, along with running their imaging routines in hardware. By contrast, Nikon is running two 32-bit (and older design) cores at a slower clock speed in EXPEED.
I think Thom's analysis is spot on. Imagine if the image processig prowess of the iPhone XS was matched with the sensor and lens quality and camera controls of the Fuji X series?
