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 p.44 #18 · 'Unofficial' Photokina RUMOR Thread | |
DaveMart wrote:
Guy Mancuso wrote:
I completely 110 percent agree. No question at all about what you just said. But how can we make them think different at least 10 percent of the company. i hate bringing up Leica but reason i do is they build to utmost quality even at the risk of losing it all. Not a great business model but there needs to be some balance. It's wishful thinking i know that but we just have to keep pounding away, I really hope that after 5 years of people screaming at them about the wides , it actually does something. i just like to take the big mouth role on this because i care about it and the industry and frankly other shooters. Someone has to carry the torch, i am trying although it can completely be laughed at. And i am sure I am while they are filling there pockets. 
Sounds like 'how to make a small company' - start with a big one.
Unless Canon loose their marbles there is no way they can copy the business model of a small, specialist company - that is like expecting car manufacturers to make custom cars.
I don't really see what the problem is anyway, since apparently Leica action the values you want, so you are surely suited.
Canon make cameras for more generalist use, at a much more reasonable price.
Some critiques are fair, like no grid lines available, and others just miss the point, as for instance in the Canon direct print button.
Most Japanese homes, and for that you can probably read east asian homes, have no computer, and so they need a convenient way of printing at home.
Perhaps we might be able to get the button programmable, but to assume that Canon do not know what they are doing by putting it in just does not take account of the various needs of Canon's customers, or appreciate that there has doubtless been a very careful balancing act going on particularly at this level between the desires of enthusiasts and the needs of the more general population, who after all pay for it.
Not to accept that Canon is a mass-market supplier entirely misses the point, and gives rise to unrealistic expectations and fundamentally misconceived critiques,
Not everyone can afford or wants Leica mechanics and prime glass.
Regards,
DaveMart
I really couldn't agree with your post more, Dave. Excellent point and well said.
Canon is in the business of satisfying the widest possible cross section of consumers in order to drive revenue and profit. Of course, as the saying goes, "you can't please all of the people all of the time" and it's never more true than in marketing and product planning.
If Canon made a product for every niche and demand they would develop a byzantine, unfocused, mess of a product line that would quickly put them out of business. So, thankfully we have a free market where competition flourishes and competitors like Kodak on the low end and Leica on the high end fill specialist voids left by the broadly appealing Canon product line.
Guy, as you've already mentioned, Leica produces products with sometimes questionable profit margins for the specialist shooter. Why would you expect Canon to dilute it's line by offering a similar low margin product against an established competitor? That's strategic suicide. It would create a resource burn in Canon R&D, Marketing, Supply Chain Management, etc, and Nikon would use it to their advantage to attack the core Canon product line.
Carrying the torch for a superior product line, while noble, is futile. As I mentioned before in a much earlier post, large corporations care about consumer demands and expectations only as far as required to separate Joe Customer from his money. The second part of that statement is that if there isn't enough money involved, then the coproration is just as happy to send Joe Customer to the competition to be a resource drain on them.
Edited on Oct 08, 2006 at 08:06 PM
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"Where's Bob?" "Well... he was assigned to read the Canon forums" "Oh, I'm so sorry. Are you sending flowers?"
Note the prime they upgraded was the 85/1.2, an elite lens. And of course the 50/1.2 is an elite lens, albeit one that has the added advantage of creating an elite portrait lens for the APS-C crowd. 
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