Leica's future (was Re: [Leica] Ted Grant's Ravings)

[lbonser@worldnet.att.net]

My thoughts:

The thing Leica does best is glass. The quality of their cameras aside (no
arguement that they are jewels!), the quality of the lenses is second to
none. Why not generate a little extra cash by making lenses for other
cameras? I'm sure there are people out there shooting Canon, Nikon, Minolta,
Pentax, whatever, that would love to buy Leica lenses that would fit on
their cameras.

Les



>on 25/1/00 3:34 pm, Stephen Gandy at leicanikon@earthlink.net wrote:

>> However something is broken, but it's not the camera -- it's the lack of
black
>> ink in Solms.  Something has to change, or everyone on this list will
>> eventually
> become collectors of a discontinued camera.

>Perfectly true. I've never been tempted into one of these 'whither leica'
>threads before, but here are my thoughts.

>1.  The leica brand is worth a hell of a lot. Danger sign for a company
>ploughing into the red. Germans may not like hostile takeovers but hey,
>welcome to the 21st century.

>2.  Incremental progress of the kind most often envisaged on this ng is
>unlikely to turn the corner for the company

>3.  Most people who are likely to buy leicas in their current incarnation
>already have them, or replace customers who die. I don't think people are
>buying voigtlander or konica bodies instead of leicas. As well, maybe, or
>instead of other cameras. However, they are *very* likely to buy the lenses
>if they already own leica bodies.

>4.  The M6 is a highly evolved camera which doesn't have too much room for
>'improvement'. It's never going to be an autofocus, modal, motordriven
>thing. Personally, give me a manual camera, but that's just me.

>5.  Leica simply don't have the R&D infrastructure to introduce competitive
>digital or autofocus technology. They  *have* to license this either
>externally or from a future business partner.

>So what are my conclusions? Leica can only grow its revenue by introducing
>new products which address new customers. Thus it has to go high: all
>singing all dancing autofocus M7; low: a budget body to compete with all
>those second hand M2s and M4-Ps out there, but which allows aspirant users
>to buy into the system; sideways, but voigtlander  and konica are there
>already; or niche, turning out more and more jewellike collectors pieces
>(spit).

>Personally, the only interesting direction I can see is sideways, which
>means a merger. If this allows leica to maintain its lens production
(they'd
>be nuts not to) and service the legacy of M-body users, while evolving the
>M6 (again, they'd be nuts not to) and perhaps blue-skying an M7 with the
>help of newfound R&D muscle, I say great.  The rest of it will be...
>interesting to say the least. One important corollary would be that you
>would find the cheaper lenses rebadged as 'leica/cosina' or whatever, and
>perhaps a coherent match between the two ranges.

>The alternatives are not pleasant to contemplate.

>Final thought: they should introduce a 'mass customisation' service whereby
>like Dell Computers, you can specify your M on the web. I'd like a low-mag,
>black finish M6 please, only don't bother with the electronics, and give me
>framelines for 28/35/50/75/90/135. Oops, I've already got one. It's an
M4-P.