Leica's M9 and Mini M plan

[mcsol]

Found this clip in a reputable German newspaper:
"Zum einen soll es eine M9 Sucherkamera mit Vollformat-Sensor geben. Das bringt höchste Abbildungsqualität. Zudem ist eine R10-Spiegelreflexkamera mit übergroßem Chip und Autofokus in Arbeit - eine komplizierte Neuentwicklung bis hin zum Verschluss und zu den Objektiven. Und schließlich dürfte eine Art "kleine" digitale M auf den Markt kommen."

The bottom line: Leica is working hard on the devlopment of a full-frame M9, an auto-focus R10 and a "small" digital M. When - nobody but Leica knows. Though they also stressed in the article that some believe that Leica hasn't got too much time left to implement this if they want to get out of the crisis that they have been in for the last few years...

link (in German): http://www.welt.de/welt_print/articl...uer_Leica.html

And, did you know that Queen Elizabeth II shoots with an M8?
Dr. Kaufmann's daughter seems to be happy with a Samsung, though :-)
(note: Dr. Kaufmann owns about 97% of Leica)

Looking forward to your thoughts...

-mj

[POINT OF VIEW]

Crisis? Leica is the only company in the world making a digital rangefinder camera ( a excellent camera, in my opinion, I might add). They just came out with 4 brand new lens. They have the only real professional Rangefinder film camera in the world. Last but not least they are designing lens for some very fine point and shoot plus midrange cameras. That doesn’t look like a crisis to me.

[mcsol]

Originally Posted by nikonhswebmaster

They mean financial crisis, which at this point might be considerable.

Leica may in fact be a rich man's hobby, there is now no public disclosure.

There is just simply no way to know what is happening or will happen. Leica could remain private, be sold to an obvious choice like Panasonic, or even an new player. They are indeed selling a lot of cameras, and look healthy.

They definitely look a lot healthier than in 2005, which they barely survived as a company.
The M9 with full-frame is the next logical step, but it may still be years away; will be interesting to see how they will overcome the inherent full-frame issues of the rangefinder design. I could imagine that Leica is also working hard to bring the R10 to the market, especially since they are having compliance issues with the electronic board of the R9.
I read somewhere that they produce around 12,000 M's per year. Not a whole lot, but then Leica has never been a mass market product and will probably never be.

-mj

[NB23]

They are surely on the way to health.

However, we're not helping them by being Die-Hard Leica fans but not buying anything new. Buying used doesn't help...

[Al Patterson]

Hmm. "small" digital M? I'd love to see a digital version of the CL or CLE...

[jbf]

That was a great read.


For anyone who's interested here's the google translation:

http://translate.google.com/translat...hl=en&ie=UTF-8


BTW, it's an extremely good translation too...

[Avotius]

hm.....very compelling, I guess we cant write off leica as dead stick yet. Quite interesting. If only they can offer the M9 at the same price as the current M8, at least...

[LeicaTom]

12,000 cameras a year?.......they will be in trouble and bankrupt again before you know it - gone are the proud days of selling tens of thousands of M`s per year, maybe it`s better this way, the M8 has`nt helped Leica`s reputation now has it?

I doubt there will ever be a M9 or a R10 the way the company`s going, they need alot more customers then 15 or 20 thousand a year and their Panasonic wedding`s only saving the name, nothing else

Ohhh and BTW Queen Elizabeth has gotten a NEW M Leica from the factory every since 1954, she`s always been a avid Leica enthusiast

Tom

[cameraman]

For me, the interesting part would be to see how fast they can come out with a new full format M. These things costs money, and I hardly think the R&D budget of Leica is up there with Canon/Nikon. In a perfect world, they could benefit from a "low price" option, some product to generate income. How about a combined effort? Leica + Zeiss + Cosina? That would be fun! The market for these are small enough as it is, and I wonder how many would buy a $1500 digital rangefinder. I sure would pick it up, as long as it wasn't based on the Bessa R2...

[northpole]

If the US economy doesn't improve in the near future (the ripples from which are already making themselves felt on the world's stock markets), companies such as Leica could be badly hit as the "rich men" referred to above temper their
expenditures on hobbies.

Peter

[Photon42]

the "Welt" newspaper just does guessing and it's and old contribution, too. That's fine. There are, in my opinion, other german-speaking newspapers and journals, doing reliable investigations. They haven't reported anything similar, AFAIK.

Just my two cents

[Peter Walnes]

Originally Posted by mcsol

They definitely look a lot healthier than in 2005, which they barely survived as a company.


-mj

They sure do. Without the M8, it's difficult to see how they would be still here at all.

I'm pretty sure the M8 wouldn't have had those banding issues if there had been a bit more time to iron them out, but there wasn't.

[Prosaic]

Good news!

[kshapero]

Originally Posted by POINT OF VIEW

They have the only real professional Rangefinder film camera in the world..

We love Leica but oh contrare....

[rxmd]

As far as products are concerned, this article is not news at all. The section on new developments does not quote any Leica sources at all; on the contrary it says "the company does not give information about the future of the Leica lineup".

They are just reproducing hearsay and the wishful thinking of the online Leica community, where they've probably done their "research" on that matter. The article does not present Leica's M9 and Mini M plans, it presents the M9 and Mini M dreams of the Leica fan community and interprets them to be Leica's plans.

Philipp

[Prosaic]

Originally Posted by rxmd

They are just reproducing hearsay and the wishful thinking of the online Leica community

"110 new employees have been hired" is not an online rumour. Neither is Lees three step program ("new customers, new products"). We´ll see. M9 full frame and digital CL make sense to me.

[tomasis]

I really hope that Leica continue introduce cheaper products, aimed for not only rich men. Summarits is very good example! I don't think that a small M with APS sensor will be so difficult to produce at cheaper price. Like some said as Leica digital CL (cheap material and design which takes M mount lenses). It would be great using one small lens which becomes equivalent 40mm for film. The problem is the viewfinder quality though I can live with Bessa VF so Leica can do it.

[Marc-A.]

Old news. Horosu (RFF member) told me about that more than a month ago. Anyway, that's only Leica's com. We'll see. Que sera sera ...

[HAnkg]

There have been a lot of posts about the M8 destroying Leica's reputation. M8 sales would fall off a cliff once initial orders were filled, etc., etc., But the reality is after years barely surviving Leica thanks to the M8 is now selling everything it can produce, and it's hiring and expanding for the first time in decades.

If the R10 does well Leica will have put it's sorry recent past well behind it. The fly in the ointment might be a global economic downturn which could do some damage to a lot of camera manufacturers and might arrest Leica's recovery. Barring that (a severe worldwide recession), a revived R line, together with digital M sales will guarantee lot's of new products and even some innovation from Leica in the future.

[rxmd]

Originally Posted by Prosaic

"110 new employees have been hired" is not an online rumour. Neither is Lees three step program ("new customers, new products").

I was referring to the section on new products. Neither of the points you made are in there. I'm not denying that the article has some sources at Leica, only not for the section on new products that this thread is largely interested in, judging by the thread title.

Originally Posted by Prosaic

M9 full frame and digital CL make sense to me.

For me both don't make sense. Or they make sense as products, but sound problematic as parts of a product lineup.

A digital mini-M will cut into M8 sales just like the CL cut into M5 sales. Leicas own sales are slim enough that they can't afford to undercut them. The existing M8 will have to present significant added value over a hypothetical mini-M, so the mini-M, if it comes, is likely to be crippled in significant aspects. I mean really significant as in "crop factor 2", or in "zoom viewfinder with only electronic rangefinder", not as in "slightly smaller rangefinder base" or "slightly different viewfinder" or "not in the original M form factor", because that didn't make a significant difference with the original CL either. If the mini-M lets you do the same that you could do with an M8, or almost the same, then the mini-M will be a danger for Leica, so it has to be substantially less capable.

A full-frame M9 will be hideously expensive given today's technology. Then again, maybe customers don't care and Leica doesn't mind producing a camera of which only a couple of thousand can be sold if at all. If people buy $6k lenses, maybe two or three of them will also buy $10k bodies. In this case the M9 is not a relevant product for any consideration of mine any more than a Seitz 6x17. But: Just because people say they would like to buy something, doesn't mean they will.

Regarding the oversized-sensor, autofocus R10: oversized sensors are a staple item in nerd speculations about digital developments in the 35mm world, people were speculating about that for the Canon 1Ds Mk III as well. It does not make sense technically because of the size and available clearance of the mirror, since it would make all the existing lenses incompatible mechanically. Let Leica build a full frame 35mm camera first, it's a capability they haven't demonstrated so far either. There is no market for what would effectively be another medium format system - in fact the existing systems are already done for; the Contax 645 is dead, and Pentax is having difficulties getting a workable digital 645 out, so I don't see why Leica with its overstrained development budget would want to dabble in this minefield. The "custom shutter" in the article is completely unnecessary because Leica has good electronic shutters already. Finally, autofocus has been speculated for the R series since the R8; Puts, in possibly unintended irony, wrote that Leica will have to develop autofocus sooner or later because Leica buyers are getting older and older and their eyes are getting weaker and weaker. I believe Leica producing an autofocus SLR when I see it, because many Leica-heads tend to see autofocus as the work of the devil and Leica as the epitome of manual-focus goodness, but still this seems to me the most likely addition of all the pieces of speculation from the article.

So until I hear someone from Leica making a definitive statement in the direction of one of these products (and I mean we-have-a-working-preseries-and-will-present-it-at-Photokina definitive, not some-of-us-have-been-speculating-over-a-beer-about-it definitive), I will remain quite skeptical about them.

Philipp

[Peter Walnes]

The R10 would spell suicide for Leica. How could it possibly compete with Canon EOS 1DS mark 3, Nikon D3 or upcoming D3x, Sony A900?

Now if they could continue evolving the R lens programme and produce some of them with Nikon and Canon mounts, that would start to make sense. There would be a genuine economy of scale there. One lens, 3 different systems to sell it into.

[ferider]

Originally Posted by rxmd

A digital mini-M will cut into M8 sales just like the CL cut into M5 sales. Leicas own sales are slim enough that they can't afford to undercut them.

Philipp

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 ....

At the current prices that the market accepts, they can do whatever they want.

Roland.

[Prosaic]

Originally Posted by rxmd

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.

[Ken Ford]

Originally Posted by Prosaic

"110 new employees have been hired" is not an online rumour. Neither is Lees three step program ("new customers, new products"). We´ll see. M9 full frame and digital CL make sense to me.

That's 110 employees *fired* from what I read.

[rxmd]

Originally Posted by ferider

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.

Originally Posted by Prosaic

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