stgrove wrote:
Fred,
From what I hear directly from Leica is that many lenses they barely sell anymore (in like over a year) and this has happened as alternative lenses, like LLL, have come to the marketplace.
Yes, a lot of us prefer waiting a bit and buying used Leica lenses here at FM for as much as half the retail price. At this point the used Leica market might be more active than the new one. Leica should start reporting FM classifieds as a sales channel.
There's also the fact that third party manufacturers now develop lenses Leica doesn't even offer, or that outperform Leica's own due to more modern designs. A good example is the Voigtlander 28mm f/2 APO-Lanthar, and now the new 75mm f/2.8 APO and 90mm f/4 APO-Lanthar. Light Lens Lab goes even further, developing M lenses with no Leica equivalent at all, like the SP2 and Z21 series. At some point Leica may need to start competing with lenses that share its own mount. But can you imagine how much they'd ask for a 28mm f/2 Summicron-APO!
The other day I was watching one of those Leica Miami store videos, and they can't even bring themselves to say the word "Voigtlander". Since they're a Leica store, they clearly know competition is getting tough for Leica's own lenses and their prices. Still, there's a niche of buyers who will only shoot Leica. Whether that niche is shrinking or not, I honestly can't say.
