hteasley
Pupil
I don't see a long term future for Leica in camera bodies. Digital has commoditized camera bodies in the same way "quartz movements" commoditized wrist watches.
That's bad MBA advice, and would kill Leica off, while sounding reasonable all the while. It's Amelio-era Apple thinking, not Jobs-era Apple thinking. Long after computers became commoditized, Jobs took a floundering Apple and made a massive hit with the iMac, which wasn't really much different from other computers, functionally. But the user experience was different.
Leica can't become a commodity camera company and survive. They clearly don't want to be a commodity camera company. Their reputation is such that people don't want Leica lenses made in Canada as compared to Germany: these are lenses from the same company! People want Leica products made in Germany, and they're willing to pay top dollar. That's a sort of brand identity that I'm not sure is matched by anything else.
Leica is about user experience that no one else provides, and the best consumer lenses in the world. They should keep providing both of those, and that can't happen on Canon or Nikon bodies.