Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/02/06

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Subject: Re: [Leica] APS out ?
From: "Don Dory" <dorysrus@mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 21:53:55 -0500
References: <20020206233455.47577.qmail@web9507.mail.yahoo.com> <3C61C2EF.4D2E2513@d2.com>

Kodak, and to a lesser degree Fuji, designed APS to try to drive processing
to their own main labs.  They were hoping that enough labs would not invest
the 100 to 200K  it took to convert to APS.  Unfortunately, the one hour
industry was consolidating at the time and the big guys saw APS as a
competitive edge.  Therefore, they spent the bucks so the main labs didn't
see all that much of the film.

The other side effect was that the little stores, because they could not do
the film bad mouthed it(correctly at first as the early emulsions could look
very 110 ish if exposure was off).  Another difficulty was that only the
Canon Elph took advantage of the formats ability to make a very small
camera.  So, Canon made out like a bandit with the Elph becoming the best
selling camera in the world for a while; everyone else sucked wind.  The
Christmas season on 2000 saw APS market penetration hitting something like
15% of P/S sales.  Christmas season 2001 saw APS hit single digit market
share.

Minolta does need the money, their APS offerings aren't selling well so why
not admit the obvious and get out?  Nikon is also probably out.  Kodak
brought out their Preview but the price point was off so it didn't sell
well.  Last, Olympus and Pentax, who didn't sign on to APS kept bringing out
smaller cameras that did most of what APS does for less money.

Don Dory
dorysrus@mindspring.com

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In reply to: Message from Stephen Patriquen <patriquen@yahoo.com> (Re: [Leica] APS out ?)
Message from Feliciano di Giorgio <feli@d2.com> (Re: [Leica] APS out ?)