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Panasonic in talks to buy Leica from Mr. Kaufmann


petermcwerner

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Ah, the wonder of the internet;) This rumor was started, citing an anonymous third-party source, by a teacher working in Germany who only joined DPR three-weeks ago. It must be true then:D .

 

Why do we bother with stuff like this, come to think of it why am I bothering:)

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Guy,

 

It reminds me of when I worked for Control Data Corporation. We were known for our super computers like the Cray 1. The mini-computer was just starting to take hold of the market and upstarts like DEC and others were starting to take away business with a new paradigm.

 

John,

 

Sorry, but you need to get your history straight. Seymour Cray worked briefly for CDC, but started his own company, Cray Research in 1972, which produced the Cray 1.

 

Larry

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Perhaps this is the "big news" that was rumoured to be coming in a thread a month or so ago.

 

Sorry - shouldn't throw fuel on the fire... ;)

 

That's not nice as a moderator. LOL

 

But hey, do you remember that Dr. Kaufmann said he would be the interim CEO for only one year when he fired Lee in last Feb? his time is up. :p

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:)

More likely that news is this - see the News Flash on the front page!.

 

Oh - and Happy Birthday Red Dot Cameras! 1 year old today.

 

A good dealer, happy birthday indeed! Wonder what the new products might be? S2 early, new smaller DRF, R10 surprise:) . No, don't go there;) .

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If you look at the 2006 Annual Report, Dr Spichtig seemed to indicate that Leica was cutting Portugal free and that they would have to find their own work.

 

My thought was that Portugal does the Sport Optics and some basic machining operations on the M8 castings but where the cloth shutter was fiddly to make and was done in Portugal, the new one comes in straight from Copal in Japan. Similarly, I doubt Leica does the electronics and subcontracts it instead to companies who are geared up to do this sort of thing round the clock to make the capital equipment involved pay for itself.

 

Germany has a huge array of specialist suppliers, the Mittelstand, and I do wonder whether the economic case for Portugal is as strong as it once was.

 

One number I've been told is that the parts for an M8 come from 250 separate suppliers.

 

Let's count them: Kodak, Copal, Analog Devices, Intel, Samsung, Philips, Xilinx, Renesas, Ricoh, Sanyo, Maxim, Namiki... it's easy to see how it could mount up to that number.

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If Panasonic buys Leica, they may actually get a modern assembly line, that would allow Leica to sell cameras at more realistic prices, even if they were still made in Germany (in that new factory they are building in Wetzlar).

 

Highend Nikon's and Canon's are still assembled largely by hand and for the most part sell for sane prices. There's no reason why Leica couldn't do the same.

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So you are saying Japanese/Chinese don't care about what they're doing?

 

I'm guessing BMW, Mercedes, VW don't care about what they're doing either because they all have factories in China now.

 

Geez, don't buy Louis Vuitton, don't buy Gucci, don't buy Escada, don't buy Hermes, boycott Versace, because they're all made in China now. LOL

 

You won't know where you are after 30, 40 years so why would you worry about a darned camera? :D

 

Sure. And the first thing they ask you in China about a BMW is 'is it assembled in China or a real one?'. People are paying high taxes in China to get 'the real thing', although the quality of the Shenyang lines might well me up to those in Regensburg or Munich.

 

Don't get me wrong, we will see more Chinese cars in the future. But they will be something different.

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