Tariq Gibran
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 p.52 #13 · Fujifilm X-Pro1 interchangeable lens | |
michaelwatkins wrote:
So they bought a chassis with someone else's mount with no expectation of making lens sales. Was this done so they could rapidly fill a hole in the product line up?
Not baseless, inferred. Do the X100 or X10 look like loss leaders? No. Should we assume that the X Pro 1 subsidizes the X mount lenses? Why should we? It makes less sense to assume that they would than to assume they would not.
The major difference between the X Pro 1 and a NEX-5N are some details as to how the shared sensor is packaged in each camera's implementation, and the optical viewfinder of course. Certainly the additional manual controls increase body costs too, but not radically so. The price delta between the two cameras is very large however - more than $1,000 US at retail - and it seems unlikely (my guess, baseless no doubt) that the implementation cost differences are proportional to the final selling price delta.
Fujifilm seems to be pricing its X line at elevated levels relative to the technology in them. They are riding something of a wave right now that has not yet crested, so they can do this.
Auto focus lenses on the other hand are something of a commodity, easily compared to AF lenses from other makers. Thus unless Fujifilm is out of the gate coming out with new classics featuring great resolving power, low distortion, in a really sturdy package designed to last the ages, we can probably expect they are building lenses that are good enough for the task that can be manufactured and sold at prices roughly competitive with other major camera makers. Noting Canon's seasonal push for lens sales, not bodies, in its television advertising, I'm assuming that Canon makes money on its lenses and assume that Nikon does as well and even Sony. Without direct evidence to the contrary the simple case is the one we should lean on.
So yes, I'm inferring that Fujifilm intends the body and lens sales to return profits individually. How they amortize their development costs over the long run ... who knows, but from a cost of production and sales perspective there is no reason to believe they aren't earning a profit on the sale of each unit.
Regardless, offering an open camera body with support for alt glass doesn't change the foregoing. They'll sell incrementally more bodies and more AF lenses if they offer a system which properly supports manual focus lenses. Yes, that's opinion but is it baseless? 
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I don't know why Fuji chose to use Nikon bodies, I can only guess. When they did this originally, DSLR's were quite expensive and with Nikon they were able gain a quick and direct path into a well established system. There was a huge installed user base from the very start. They were likely surprised by just how fast and competitive the market they entered into actually became. For instance, I paid $2400 for my APS 6MP Fuji S2 Pro NIkon based body, a body which was one of Nikon's cheaper consumer bodies no less, sometime in late 2002 or so. Only three years later and one could buy a FF Canon 5D 12MP camera for not much more (I think I paid around $2700). I don't think Fuji could keep up with the expectations of their users AND continue to make a profit.
I don't know if Fuji is pricing their technology at elevated prices since we have no direct camera to compare it with (one which has a Hybrid finder). This is usually where Fuji does the best - introduce products which have unique, home grown innovative technologies which cannot be directly replaced with something else. We saw it with the Super CCD in the DSLR's (amazing dynamic range), we now see it with the Hybrid finder and possibly the CFA technology and I would argue we saw it in their film products as well (Acros, Velvia, and so on).
I do think (infer, guess or whatever) Fuji has priced both their lenses and their body to individually make a profit. That said, my Sony example still stands. And besides the computer hardware/ software example, another very obvious/ famous example are printers and ink. Many companies sell ink jet printers at a loss, subsiding their cost with the fortune they make in ink sales.
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