Not sure about ambitious and professional photographers and smart phones, but I can absolutely see they were not making much on their camera lenses. I still reckon they will return if they see an opportunity.
"Zeiss photographer Greg Watermann shared to me the official answer he got from Zeiss about the rumor of their photo market withdrawal:
ZEISS has not withdrawn from the photo lens market.
A simple look at https://www.zeiss.com/consumer-products/int/photography.html or amazon.com shows that we are still promoting and selling our photo lenses.
But we have to face the facts. In the first months of the pandemic, the global market declined significantly and irreversibly. And companies have to adapt.
And, of course, we are bringing our unique expertise to mobile imaging. Because it is also clear that consumers, as well as ambitious and professional photographers, increasingly prefer their smartphones for all-day photography.
Full disclosure by Greg Watermann:
Zeiss recently renewed my Lens Ambassador status and assured me of years of continued inventory, spare parts, repair and tech support, and customer service. They’re only responding to where the photography market is Already heading. I’ve been using Zeiss lenses for 40 years; they’re not going anywhere."
I’m not so sure about Amazon. A few years ago a Zeiss marketing person told me they don’t sell via Amazon. This may have changed, but whereas Nikon or Sigma lenses show a PDF with warranty info on Amazon product listings, for Zeiss it says one should get in touch with the manufacturer for warranty information and that the warranty depends on a number of issues. Not sure Amazon is an authorized Zeiss lens dealer. So, not sure that info on SAR is right.
johnvanr wrote:
I’m not so sure about Amazon. A few years ago a Zeiss marketing person told me they don’t sell via Amazon. This may have changed, but whereas Nikon or Sigma lenses show a PDF with warranty info on Amazon product listings, for Zeiss it says one should get in touch with the manufacturer for warranty information and that the warranty depends on a number of issues. Not sure Amazon is an authorized Zeiss lens dealer. So, not sure that info on SAR is right.
Zeiss made Cinema lenses, microscopes and all sorts of glass outside our area. Besides that if I’m correct here as Leica told me in Germany they stop making a lens or body they need to keep parts for repairs and such up to 7 years.
Yes, but as I wrote earlier, this appears on Amazon about Zeiss lenses:
Warranty & Support
If you'd like a copy of the manufacturer's warranty for a product found on Amazon.com, you can contact the manufacturer directly or visit their website for more information. Manufacturer's warranties may not apply in all cases, depending on factors like the use of the product, where the product was purchased, or who you purchased the product from. Please review the warranty carefully, and contact the manufacturer if you have any questions.
Disclaimer I may be reading way to much into things... I do know supply chains are still a mess in general. But I stumbled across something very interesting.
A few weeks ago I went to order a new Zeiss 77mm UV filter at B&H and it was out of stock (still is). I checked B&H site today and noticed the Zeiss Planar 50mm f/1.4 ZF.2 lens was out of stock. Okay this is an old lens. Then I checked there ranger finder lenses and found 1 is out of stock and one is on back order.
Next I got curious and checked Adorama. At Adorama probably about 1/2 the Zeiss UV filter sizes are listed as out of stock or special order. Some of the Zeiss DSLR lenses are listed as special order such as the Zeiss Milvus 25mm f/1.4 ZF.2 and Zeiss Milvus 100mm f/2.0 ZE. On the Mirrorless side I noticed the Zeiss 40mm f/2.0 Batis is on back order. On the ranger finder side most lenses are listed as special order. Note I mostly buy from B&H so maybe an Adorama shopper will know if Adorama normally had many Zeiss products as special order.
Next I checked amazon. Most of the Zeiss UV filters if in stock have limited numbers left available, mostly single digits. Most Zeiss Milvus lenses have single digit stock left. Most Zeiss Batis lens have single digit sock left. Most Loxia lenses have single digit stock left. Note this is probably the first time I have searched for Zeiss products on Amazon so I don't know what their normal stock levels are.
Maybe timing is bad and Zeiss will be resupplying there stock soon 🤞But this does not give me confidence when taking into account all the other information in this thread.
Cosina produces the ZM, Milvus & Classic and Otus line lenses and I believe they are made in periodical small volume production runs like Cosina's Voigtländer lenses. In Japan all those lenses run out of stock periodically in shops over time and then they pop back in when the new production run has taken place. If the demand is quite low in the first place there might be longer gaps in availability since Cosina probably waits for sufficient number of new orders for a lens before they schedule it for a new production run.
If production had been discontinued, the shops would start to mark the lenses as sold out instead of backordered etc. but none of the lenses that are still listed as being in production in Cosina's website have started to be marked as sold out in any Japanese stores that carry those lenses.
Also, Zeiss probably doesn't need to do much to keep those lenses in production since they are already existing designs and Zeiss are not producing those themselves, but if they decided to stop all activity they'd need to tell their Japanese lens manufacturing partners to stop production etc. Not seen any signs of that in Japan market so far.
It's been true of each of Zeiss's Japanese lens producers for decades - small periodic production runs are a fact of life for these and other manual focus high end lenses. Back orders may be a good sign, rather than the opposite, as Cosina can wait until they have sufficient numbers (plus projections) for a new assembly run. It may be that such lenses are affected by phones less than more mainstream consumer lenses and mainstream brand lenses. Brand loyalty (and the value it commands) is strong, as shown by this thread.
I think the picture is now clear: zeiss has stopped developing new camera lenses, but will not leave the market, i.e. they will continue selling their remaining inventory. Assuming demand will remain low, and shrink further, they will probably not run new production batches, so one by one, the lenses will become unavailable.
Zeiss will concentrate on making lenses for smartphones.
Am I overlooking anything?
I intend to use my Loxia trio for quite some time though, and will remain a Zeiss fan.
I think they will rather keep their Japanese manufacturing partners making new batches of their lenses for a while longer and may discontinue them gradually by dropping future production of older and/or least popular lenses in their remaining lineup one by one. I doubt that there is any big pile of remaining inventory of those lenses since they've always been produced in smallish production runs over a long time (at least the ones produced by Cosina) so if they decided to stop production the lenses would go out of supply rather quickly.
They have already discontinued some of the ZM line and most of the Classic line gradually over time. I'd expect no new lenses but old ones remaining in production selectively and reduction of remaining lineup each year going forward.
Juha Kannisto wrote:
They have already discontinued some of the ZM line and most of the Classic line gradually over time. I'd expect no new lenses but old ones remaining in production selectively and reduction of remaining lineup each year going forward.
I feel like this still raises a lot of questions though; since Zeiss has such prowess in the field you'd expect them to at least collaborate with other manufacturers if they don't feel like it's financially interesting to do it themselves. Making the Batis line their final in-house designed product without much of a response; even the statements that have been released about this so far seem rather avoidant of the matter.
It just makes you wonder where it all went wrong, was their R&D cost just too high? Are labor costs just much higher for Zeiss compared to industry standards? Did they have too broad of a portfolio to keep up? Is there just more money in smartphones? Do they feel like they lost their place in the market with no way to return to it?
Zeiss's strength in photography is primarily in the design of lenses and in the patents they hold based on these designs, like T* coatings. Their manufacturing of photography lenses is already long out-of-house.
So, what would "leaving the market" even look like? Ceasing to have third party manufacturers produce lenses for which there actually is a market demand? I don't see that happening. On the other hand, I expect there is tiny and diminishing demand for large, very expensive lenses that were designed for DSLR cameras, like the Otus. Those may well fade and be discontinued.
They did just recently try to market their god-forsaken camera, so that shows an interest in the photography market.
I think that what we are seeing is just the on-going calculation, within the context of a very large and multifarious organization, of whether there is a market opportunity in photography at the moment. At this moment it appears that they don't see one for mirrorless cameras. When they next see an opportunity, I would expect them to design for it. Meanwhile, they are selling and authorizing production for existing lenses that actually sell.
Perhaps Zeiss found too many plates to keep spinning, So looking at profitability, Staff to turnover, Space employed, etc...
They decided Camera lenses were least valuable in many ways. I also guess that sunsetting this slowly will be the way they go.
In a country Famed for Engineering I would think this will mean they can redeploy resources in a relaxed way.
As many have said, There lenses were made elsewhere, so the QA department must remain, and service department. Now whether these are a phone line that pulls back staff for a short period, a couple of permanently staffed labs or as little as they can manage, we will only find out in time.
"Zeiss has denied the suggestion that it's left the photography industry. A widely-reported post on the Fred Miranda forum claimed Zeiss' Australian distributor had said the company is discontinuing its lenses and filters.
The company has denied the report:
'Zeiss has not withdrawn from the photo lens market.
But we have to face the facts. In the first months of the pandemic, the global market declined significantly and irreversibly. And companies have to adapt.
And, of course, we are bringing our unique expertise to mobile imaging. Because it is also clear that consumers, as well as ambitious and professional photographers, increasingly prefer their smartphones for all-day photography.'
We've asked the company for more detail about what has been cut, per the comment about facing facts. It's worth noting that many of the lenses Zeiss has historically produced have been for Canon's EF and Nikon's F DSLR mounts, which are likely to be in decline, now that both those brands have shifted their focus to mirrorless systems."
In my opinion, for what little that's worth, I wouldn't have thought that a reduction of overall camera sales or lenses should have affected Zeiss sales all that much.
I think the kind of person who would buy a manual focusing, slow yet expensive lens for the qualities that Zeiss offer, aren't the people that are going out and replacing their DSLR/ILC with an iPhone. If anything, it seems like the market for fulframe cameras is growing, there are far more options today than the early days of DSLR's. A retired couple in Florida buying a Canon XSi kit at a Costco, yeah those people have moved on to an iPhone/Android phone and likely won't come back, but in my opinion I don't think they were ever looking at a $1.5k Zeiss prime in the first place. The reduction in the amount of cameras and lenses have never made much sense to me when you also consider that there are hardly any cell phone cameras that have lenses greater than 50mm equivalent. What are all those people that used to use a Telephoto doing, cropping until they get what looks like a water painting?
Zeiss with their partnership with Sony were early in the mirrorless game and for a long time the only quality lens option in certain focal lengths. That was probably their peak lens sales I imagine. Now that Sony and some third parties have released a lot of lenses, the market for Sony lenses are saturated, and the Zeiss lenses are harder propositions against other equivalent focal length FE lenses, especially so that they kept the same high prices and on the used market can be found for half as much. The Batis 25mm and 40mm need their MSRP's reduced if they want to remain competitive, even if it's 2/3rds as much as today they could still keep the premium marketing that they want from the Zeiss name while remaining competitive against the GM and Sigma lenses. The Loxia's are likely fine as those are for a specific niche that I think don't care about the price as much being manual focus, they are never considered a "value" lens imo.
6 months ago partnerships with Nikon and Canon to release their Loxia lineup to those Cameras, would have been a wise decision, especially for Canon RF as they do not have any quality wide prime options at the moment. I imagine it would not have taken much work to adapt those lenses. Lately, I think a lot of German companies are out of touch with their customer base, and rely to much their storied brand names (Mercedes EQS/EQE for example).
