Re: [Leica] Leica Financials Good Overall

[Larry Kopitnik <kopitnil@marketingcomm.com>]

Pascal,

I agree with your evaluation.

Other than praise for the turnaround job Mr. Cohn has done, I 
purposely kept my own comments out of my original post, limiting it 
to facts and quotes pulled from the official Leica release.

But Leica stating for publication, ""The exaggerated expectations, 
with which the high development costs were justified, have not been 
fulfilled with regard to the Leica R8 camera presented in 1996" seems 
as close as Leica is likely to publicly admit that the R8 has been a 
financial failure. And singling out the R8, among all products, for 
such a negative comment suggests to me some internal resentment to 
the camera.

It will be interesting to see whether new R lenses are released at 
Photokina. If they are, then Leica is clearly still committing 
development money to the system. But if nothing new in the R line is 
shown, I would read that, on top of the financial report statement 
quoted above, as implying insufficient R sales to warrant further 
investment in the system at this time.

Larry

>>>>>>>>>>
But it's, as you noted, the part on the R sales decline that kept me
wondering. Especially wording like "the exxaggerated expectations, with
which the high development costs were justified, have not been fulfilled
with regard to the Leica R8 camera presented in 1996."

In between the lines this would imply that the return on investment in
the R8 development has been poor and, even more worrysome to me, that
future investments will not be made in view of the situation.

Now, what this implies for the future of the R series I do not know as I
am not in the inner circle of decision making in Solms.
Either this means "benign neglect" and concentrating on strengths like
the M system, or this could also mean that Leica *itself* will not again
pour R&D money into future R body development but rely on a third party
to deliver a camera body (rebadging most probably, with adapted lens
mount).

Only future will tell us, but I strongly suspect that the next R body
will be based on a a partnership with another maker and will be digital
(whereby the R8 would be kept on the catalogue for traditional purposes).
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