Thansk Brock! I read your smart analysis of market shares and sales figures. Si it seems that Swarovski is the big guy aong the top brands. Zeiss is probably a close second in sports optics and Leica is a distant third.
What I am wondering is whether Leica can survive on sports optics alone? As I said the camera business has changed into electronics so there is no way that Leica can compete with Nikon or Canon. Also, a digital camera is no longer a "precision equipment" or a "work of art". It is a short-lived consumer product, a comodity item. So may be Leica should totally abonden the camear buissness and focus on sports optics?
At this price point, I don't think Leica's camera market is consumer driven, but geared mainly toward professional photographers, or high-paid professionals in other fields such as Ashwin Rao, a doctor whose photos I was just looking at. He's a serious amateur photographer with deep enough pockets to afford a Leica M9 or two.
Here he is on the Leica Camera blog:
http://blog.leica-camera.com/interview/ashwin-rao-one-leica-m9-is-not-enough/
We're wandering off topic here into photography, but you and others might enjoy this blog entry titled "The Digital Photography Industry Is Now At Its Industry Breakpoint, It Is Ready For Disruption. Not All Will Survive."
The blogger's key point being summed up by this sentence: Most innovation will happen in the middle high end market.
http://mootee.typepad.com/innovation_playground/2010/03/the-digital-photography-industry-is-now-at-its-indsutry-breakpoint-it-is-ready-for-disruption-not-al.html
Back on topic, I've said this before on other threads, which is that we might see a point in the not too distant future when the price of Leica bins edges close to the $3K mark causes Leica's Sports Division to become more professional driven than consumer driven.
That is, the sports division too will be geared toward professionals in fields related to birding or hunting and professionals in other fields who are serious amateurs (and let's not forgot spoiled brats with trust funds
. To some degree, that's already happening.
I saw this coming when some diehard Leica devotees on BF said they planned to hang on to their Trinovids rather than move up to Ultravids since they didn't think the incremental improvements were worth the "quantum leap" in costs (in the vernacular sense of the term).
I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar thread on BF in about 3-5 years (depending on how long it takes the global economy to recovery) from a group of Ultravid owners after comparing their HDs to the next gen of $3K Übervids.
As prices rise, sales lower, but the end result might be that Leica's profits stay the same or even grow a bit as Leica gears its camera and optics products and customer service toward professionals.
"Guten Tag, Herr Doctor Rao, we are just following up to see if you received your complimentary Corinthian leather golf bag with your new 8x42 Übervid?"
At one time, I suggested that in order to survive, Leica needed to do what Swarovski (was) doing (no longer) and Zeiss, that is, offer a second tier alternative to their top of the line models.
In hindsight, I think I was wrong about that. If exclusivity and prestige are hallmarks of the Leica brand, going cheaper isn't going to help their brand and might actually might harm it.
You made valid points about Leica's bad management. I've read the horror stories.
However, I think one could make a good case that it's chiefly increased labor and materials costs that have driven up the price of Leica bins, not the incremental improvements or bad management.
Germany has the highest paid workers in Europe and in some industries such as the auto industry, the highest paid in the world.
Germany also has socialized medicine and heavily subsidized college education. Germans pay for all that in higher taxes, and costs just keep climbing on medicine and education, and as they do, taxes increase along with demands from unions for higher salaries.
So to quote one of my favorite Jack Nicholson movies "Something's Gotta Give".
According to this report, if Germany stays on its present course, the government might become insolvent by 2025:
http://www.sbjum.de/english/html/reform_turbulence.html
Well, we've really gone the gamut, from micro lenses to macroeconomics.
