Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2008/12/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 8:00 PM -0500 12/19/08, Philip Forrest wrote:
>Yama,
>You're talking to owners of M8's. Not a single person on this list
>built their M8 unless we've got some engineers from Solms who
>subscribe. It's just a camera, first and foremost. That always needs to
>be remembered. There's nothing offensive about complaining how
>Leica handles the camera business. It's a business. they report to
>their investors first and their customers second. That's how
>corporations are.
>Phil Forrest
>
They report to Kaufmann. Period. The residual miniscule (hard to call
them minority anymore) investors are really sidelined.
Leica, even with Kaufmann, are small fish swimming with very big
fish. They have to find a niche that the big fish aren't interested
in, and develop that. They can't swim with the big fish, and can't
really be expected to. At this stage, expecting them to challenge and
keep up with Canon and Nikon in their markets is unreasonable and
won't happen.
Leica has found itself in a position to be able to produce and sell
(to a certain degree) optical excellence second to none. As in most
other endeavors, the last 10% costs 90% of the price. Leica is going
to produce a 50/0.95 that will be better than any lens of that focal
length and that speed or similar has ever been produced, but it will
be priced so that hardly anyone can reasonably afford it. Since few
people will be able to buy it, the few that do buy it have to share
the R&D costs. Always a difficult pricing decision.
Leica has little chance to challenge the big boys on price, features
and development cycles unless they completely change their business
model. That requires huge amounts of money that will even challenge
Kaufmann, and there is absolutely no guarantee of success. See
Olympus, Pentax or Sony. Their camera divisions aren't exactly
setting profit records.
I'm not sure how Leica can survive. I'd hate to see them go, but... I
have almost all of the lenses I want and maybe someone else will jump
into the fray with a body that will take them. For my own purposes
the G1 isn't quite it, but there are other solutions possible.
I was a bit concerned about the e-mail when I first read it, but I'm
OK with it now, and it doesn't seem quite as desperate as it did at
first. Hopefully they'll keep going for a while longer, with new
things to interest me. Meanwhile, the M8's are doing fine.
--
* Henning J. Wulff
/|\ Wulff Photography & Design
/###\ mailto:henningw@archiphoto.com
|[ ]| http://www.archiphoto.com