Thanks for the intersting history re: Honeywell's lawsuit and the like, but I
still think Olympus got out way before the handwriting was on the wall ref:
SLR sales. Your figures are true for 5 or 6 years ago, but the OM-77 came out
in 1986 and they never tried to improve it or advance an AF line. So, I'd put
the date Olympus gave up on AF SLRs as very close to 1986 rather than the
year 1991 when it officially died. The public went nuts for Minolta Maxxums
early on, I recall, as I also did. Nikon certainly was stumbling along at
best with the N2020, and Canon wasn't yet as popular as Minolta. Olympus
couldn't tell what was going to happen 10 years down the road at the early AF
days.
George S.
clintonr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
<< Why did Olympus "get out" of the AF/SLR market? That's easy - it's a
dead market! I've mentioned this before, but back five or six years
ago, PMA reported that total _worldwide_ sales of _every_ SLR were less
than 1 million. That included EOS's, Maxxim's, even 645's, the whole
lot. In that year, Olympus sold over 1 million original Stylus cameras
ALONE! Do the math!
>>
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