ferider said:
All a matter of pricing. Assume the new Summarits were developed for the digital CL. Look at their price. Than you get a feeling for the
possible pricing of a CL. At around US 2500 for the CL, both cameras
will continue to sell ....
In 1973's terms, this would sound just the same if you replace the new Summarits by the CL lenses, and this argument almost killed the M line as we all know. (Back then Leica even started inventing lies about focusing incompatibilities with the CL lenses on M bodies so that people would continue buying M lenses instead of just sticking Elmar-Cs on their M bodies.)
A "mini-M" would quite likely sell at $2500 if it did all the M8 did, but that would be counterproductive. The key question is how Leica can keep people motivated to continue shelling out $5500 for M8s if they can save more than half of that sum by buying a mini-M. The M8 will have to offer a unique selling proposition over the mini-M. Since we already know what the M8 can do, the mini-M will have to do substantially less. This is not a matter of pricing at all, it's a matter of features.
Prosaic said:
rxmd said:
A digital mini-M will cut into M8 sales just like the CL cut into M5 sales.
In a way the new summarits cut into summicron and summilux sales? Thats the nature of business.
Two answers to that:
(1) Even though both Roland and you are doing it, the comparison between bodies and lenses doesn't work, tempting though it is.
The Summarits aren't primarily competing with Leica's own lenses, they're competing with Zeiss and Cosina lenses. They're there to give low-end buyers a new Leica alternative to new non-Leica products. In addition, Leica's higher-end products have a real selling proposition over the Summarits - 1.7 stops of light do make a difference in the real world, even if you don't take the reality distortion field à la "King of Bokeh", "glow" etc. into account.
Unlike that, there is no low-end competition in the digital rangefinder market, except for a few aging R-D1 bodies with vignetting, 1.5 crop and service problems. So Leica only has themselves to compete with in bodies, which they will want to avoid as far as possible, so the low-end product has to be significantly less capable than the high-end product. See above for the rest of the argument.
(2) Going out of business is in the nature of business, too.
The M line has been through a near death experience already thanks to exactly the same lineup configuration that the mini-M would generate, and at least to me it makes sense to try to avoid repeating that experience.
All in all, I'm not denying that a mini-M could take place, but if Leica's marketing people are worth their salary it will have to be crippled significantly vis-a-vis the M8.
Philipp
