>Good question. I might answer this way: Without auto-focus the
>opportunity for high quantity sales cuts into R&D funding. Canon and Nikon
>develop a product for the masses and sell a few million units. It is far
>easier to justify spending $5,000,000 on developing a new zoom lens with
>internal stabalization when you either have the R&D funds already covered
>or you know that sales of the new zoom will exceed any costs of R&D many
>times over.
>
>Olympus won't develop anything new because market share has dropped so low
>and potential sales will never exceed 100,000 units that it is almost
>impossible to recoup R&D funds and efforts. It is far better for Olympus
>to focus their efforts and dollars where the return on investment is. And
>that isn't the OM system.
>
>Ken
Another problem is, that the manufacturers of photo equipment have grown
over the time. Some are multinational concerns now and offer a broad
product range (for example, 40 per cent of Canons business activity were
derived from photo equipment sales in 1980, in 1996 it were only 8 per
cent). These great companies are of course interested in mass products,
only. So my suggestion would be, that the great manufacturers should search
for partners, which can be smaller companies. These smaller companies could
build the specialized equipment under licence. The prices would become
higher, I think, but the equipment would be available (an extreme example
is Leica with 50 persons in the production area and an business activity of
250.000.000 DM per year, if you imagine their prices, you can calculate the
number of sold pieces). By the way: number of pieces, has anyone seen a
Zuiko 90mm 1:2 with a number greater than 110000 ? If not, Olympus maybe
has produced only one series with 10000 pieces ?
Matthias
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