Leitz/Leica has made so many marketing and engineering mistakes with their reflex cameras, going back to the original Leicaflex in 1964, that it amazes me that anyone would give a damned about it. Yes, for the most part they've produced nice SLR's, but once they hooked up with Minolta they probably would have gained market share by just offering the lenses in Minolta mount rather than retaining a Leicaflex mount on what was really a Minolta body. Then it seemed that every time a new model came out it required a different cam than the last one, unless you were willing to use stop-down metering otr spend the bucks to get your lenses recammed.
Nikon made the big time in the 1950's by producing the best lenses of the day not only in Nikon rangefinder models but also in LTM. The 85/2 and 50/1.4 became legendary and are still sought after today as users.
Now after the Voigtlander badge has shown up on a line of lower priced bodies and lenses Leica has finally decided that it's time to try marketing a lower priced line of glass under the Leica name, but Zeiss was the company that was willing to to put their name on a series of fancier higher quality Voigtlander bodies and lenses. Overall I think that this bodes well for keeping rangefinder photography a viable option, but once more Leica was a day late and a dollar short. Where's the less expensive entry level body with the Leica name? Without that Zeiss is going to eat them alive.
