Interesting. You've got a lot of people here commenting on how bad the M8 is, but many don't even have one, many didn't have it for long enough to understand it, and some have never even seen one except in pictures
You know, the M8 makes fabulous pictures. Does it have it's quirks? Yes. Does it need to be fixed? Yes--there are edge condition problems. Is it a terrible camera, or somehow essentially flawed? I don't think so, though--as I've said before--I wish the whole IR thing had been handled differently.
As for Leica as a company--one thing they're not doing is releasing "too many models" at all.
Panasonic is building and designing and releasing a relative ton of consumer models (they're good at that) with Leica branded lenses, and Leica is helping with lens specifications, no doubt. But their participation doesn't go much beyond that, I bet: it's likely a pure royalty situation for them, much like Sony and Zeiss.
The two models Leica is "managing" themselves are the DMR and M8. That's a pretty good, stable, and intelligent way to invest. Their royalties from Panasonic just keep coming; that's good business, not bad business.
So from a business perspective I fault them on communication, though they're not as bad as many; their response to the problems has been very fast.