You don't read many industry journals. Camera sales on average are off by over 40% in the past year across the industry, except for Leica. Leica is selling every camera it can produce, with gross margins that are very similar to everyone else. Since the introduction of the M9 in 2009, they've netted 29% per annum profitability growth. Everyone else has been seeing a profitability decline.
Doesn't matter how many units you sell—if your profit is going down, it's still going down. Why are they so expensive? Because they are built an old fashioned way, in small numbers, with high quality materials and lots of individual attention to each one in testing and QA. Product cachet and marketing are part of it, certainly, but not much. They've raised prices to match rising costs of energy, materials and labor while maintaining very old fashioned standards of quality. Other manufacturers in the industry have cut standards to maintain prices, and their prices have gone up too. I hear complaints on this list about price hikes on Pentax gear all the time. Leica Camera GmbH is making enough profit selling cameras to delist themselves from the stock market and fund a new, modernized factory. That's hardly at a loss or near break even. Ricoh, Sony, Canon, Olympus, and Nikon have all been much closer to break even or at a loss the past few years. Their camera divisions are all part of much much larger companies, which is how they've been surviving this current downturn cycle. Leica Camera certainly isn't perfect, nor a product for everyone. Never said it was. But my point is that they've successfully, profitably been selling a large number of all manual focus cameras. That's all. Others could do it too, if they chose to and went for an audience that valued something other than more more more more more automation convenience. There is also nothing wrong with automation convenience, as long as you recognize it for what it is and don't lose sight of what it's doing. Just like the statement that "AF can focus more precisely". Hogwash. Critical focus achieved with AF cannot be more precise than critical focus achieved with manual focus because they are EXACTLY the same thing: critical focus. Godfrey > On Sep 26, 2013, at 2:33 PM, Zos Xavius <[email protected]> wrote: > > From what I understand Leica has operated at a loss or near break even > for many years now. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
