Panasonic to market consumer products under Leica brand?

[mmradman]

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Something may be afoot, from SLrumors:-

https://www.slrumors.com/

Quote

My source told that on latest meeting it had been revealed that grand plan can be to shift all of consumer imaging product to be under Leica brand within 2 next years, with departments still mostly residing in Japan. Pro will remain in Panasonic.

Panasonic want to reposition all product as being premium, elite focused ones. Same as new S1 and S1R cameras and lenses.

Choosing L mount had been part of this same strategy.

Shifting all to be under Leica brand can be necessary due to more price hikes planned ahead, especially this considers lenses.

Also sales and preorder number more correspond to niche brand like Leica already.

My source is not sure about GH lineup future, but it can even fall as victim of big management decisions or can be transferred to pro department.

Note – it is management talks, not final decision!

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[sillbeers15]

Panasonic can buy up Leica anytime base on it’s financial means.

[pico]

20 minutes ago, sillbeers15 said:

Panasonic can buy up Leica anytime base on it’s financial means.

Of course Leica can always decline to sell. That is a virtue of private ownership.

 

[IkarusJohn]

Well, I guess that as Panasonic is a specialist premium brand, not specialising in consumer products, and Leica is particularly strong in the mass-market consumer products, it makes sense ... oh, hang on ...

[LocalHero1953]

Maybe Panasonic will stop selling Panaleicas - just leave them to Leica to sell under its own brand.

Seems odd to me though.

Edited March 16, 2019 by LocalHero1953

[can-photo]

13 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

Maybe Panasonic will stop selling Panaleicas - just leave them to Leica to sell under its own brand.

Seems odd to me though.

Thinking of it. It is now actually more odd that they sell the same camera with a slight different firmware and make up

[earleygallery]

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As we all know the Panasonic cameras are made up from all the parts that Leica rejected as not good enough, so I guess that Panasonic are fed up with all the warranty issues of their poor quality cameras made from the Leica reject parts bin. So now it will be Leica versions only.

[sillbeers15]

23 hours ago, pico said:

Of course Leica can always decline to sell. That is a virtue of private ownership.

 

The sustainability of a company depends on its ability to continue value adding on what its customers are willing to pay.

In the past Leica also failed because it stopped bringing value to it’s customers.

A major part of consumer product value add lies in new product development. Many smaller consumer product maker failed to do so fast enough due to resources limitation. Volvo cars is a good example that ended up in Chinese hands. I did not think it was by choice of Volvo.

[BernardC]

It sounds to me like Panasonic's "grand plan" is to stop selling entry-level point-and-shoot and concentrate on the ones with Leica-branded lenses. That's already the case for the Lumix Point & Shoot cameras in my country, except for the two cheapest ones. There may be more low-end Lumix in other markets, but they won't be able to compete against phone cameras much longer.

[nicci78]

Much ado about nothing 

Leica Camera is a healthy profitable company. It is the fifth camera company by sales  

1. Canon 

2. Nikon

3. Sony Imaging

4. Fujifilm Imaging (instax represents 75% of total revenue) 

5. Leica Camera

6. Olympus Imaging

7. Lumix (Panasonic digital stil cameras) only estimates, because sales are quite low, and they are shameful about it. 

8. Ricoh. Even more shameful. Only estimates too, Pentax sales are buried into a wide other products division. Maybe nothing left to report

 

 

of course japanese companies will never give up their camera division : for fiscal reasons. It is very expensive to close one their. They have to sell it. 

For example : Sony give up Vaio computer, by selling its division. 

[bags27]

On 3/22/2019 at 2:24 AM, nicci78 said:

Much ado about nothing 

Leica Camera is a healthy profitable company. It is the fifth camera company by sales  

1. Canon 

2. Nikon

3. Sony Imaging

4. Fujifilm Imaging (instax represents 75% of total revenue) 

5. Leica Camera

6. Olympus Imaging

7. Lumix (Panasonic digital stil cameras) only estimates, because sales are quite low, and they are shameful about it. 

8. Ricoh. Even more shameful. Only estimates too, Pentax sales are buried into a wide other products division. Maybe nothing left to report

 

 

of course japanese companies will never give up their camera division : for fiscal reasons. It is very expensive to close one their. They have to sell it. 

For example : Sony give up Vaio computer, by selling its division. 

this is interesting and helpful. I had thought that Leica's sales/profits weren't publicly available, as a private company. I'd be curious to see a link to that. Thanks.

[jdlaing]

38 minutes ago, bags27 said:

this is interesting and helpful. I had thought that Leica's sales/profits weren't publicly available, as a private company. I'd be curious to see a link to that. Thanks.

It is a privately held company and you’re not going to see profit statements. Why would you need to see them?

[bags27]

2 minutes ago, jdlaing said:

It is a privately held company and you’re not going to see profit statements. Why would you need to see them?

Because nicci78 made the list. What's the evidence for it?

[mmradman]

As much as would like to see evidence for one or the other this is not forensic investigation but internet (entertainment) and and sometimes people provide opinions rather than unrefutable facts, mostly ok with me.

 

[jdlaing]

2 hours ago, bags27 said:

Because nicci78 made the list. What's the evidence for it?

All that list shows is the number of cameras or lenses sold. It might be based on revenue but that’s a long way from a profit statement. Leica’s profit is nobody’s business but the owners.

[bags27]

I'm not trying to get into an argument here, and I suspect you aren't either. So we can end this peacefully. Nicci78 used the word "profitable" and I probably mindlessly and out of context repeated his word. For that, I apologize. 

But with all due respect and on a separate question, I think that anyone who invests as much as we do in a product wants to know that the company making that product will have deep enough pockets to both be around and to continue to develop its product line. No one needs to view specific and confidential information of a privately held company, but in broad strokes it's a concern that I hope we can all agree is a reasonable one. Counterfactually, companies spiral into bankruptcy because people stop buying their product when they hear that they are doing poorly: there are both vicious and virtuous cycles to all perceptions of profitability. 

Edited March 25, 2019 by bags27

[jdlaing]

No argument here.

If Leica ceases to exist tomorrow rather cameras and lenses keep working..........until they don’t.

They have been around  for a long time and I expect they’ll be around a long time into the future.

[mmradman]

1 hour ago, jdlaing said:

No argument here.

If Leica ceases to exist tomorrow rather cameras and lenses keep working..........until they don’t.

They have been around  for a long time and I expect they’ll be around a long time into the future.

Future of manual lenses and cameras is definetly more certain than those containing electronics with Leica either in or out of business. We mostly all agree that Leica is first and foremost optical company, electronics is not Leicas traditional forte.  

Conversely all or most consumer modern electronic devices are all doomed to irreparable failure sooner or later.  Leica had been learning some sobering business lessons in the recent past specifically M9 sensor failure and gradual change of heart where no more free sensor replacements  are offered - sensors cost serious money.

Perhaps creation of L alliance was move to keep Leica in business by increasing consumer base via Panasonic and Sigma involvement, so maybe Panasonic taking over mirrorless from Leica hands is not all that far fetched?

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[nicci78]

16 hours ago, jdlaing said:

It is a privately held company and you’re not going to see profit statements. Why would you need to see them?

https://leicarumors.com/2018/06/22/the-latest-2017-2018-leica-financial-statements-sales-increased-for-the-fifth-year-in-a-row.aspx/

 

Leica camera gives financial statements every year... no secret here.

Every company of the list publishes financial results. You can just compare them. Easy. Just choose to convert everything into the same currency. 

Only Ricoh and Panasonic choose to bury their camera business into other category. Typical move for bad businesses, with falling revenue. So only estimates from financial advisors.

One thing you should know, Leica camera control its own retail chain of stores, so revenue is a bit higher than typical japanese companies. Because Leica keeps all the profit for himself through this sale channel. But in the other hand, costs are high to maintain these stores. 

 

Just to sum up, Leica, a very well managed german company, will not sell itself into a japanese poorly manage one (Lumix division of Panasonic)

Fujifilm is doing very strong. And über profitable instax proves that film is not dead

Edited March 26, 2019 by nicci78