by Miserere

I have a Canadian friend who works in the Photography equipment business; he’s married to a good friend of mine from college, and while we’ve only met twice in person, we speak on the phone every now and again and exchange e-mails regularly. He frequently e-mails me news about upcoming products, but because he deals mostly with medium and large format photography, I don’t make use of this information because we’re not really concerned with that market on EtL. In any case, he’s generally been right about any predictions he’s made, which is why I did a double take when he sent me these photographs on yesterday.

About a week earlier he told me he’d heard comments through a German colleague that Leica were planning on releasing a new camera sometime in April. We both chuckled at the idea, but wondered if the R10 (the fabled Leica DSLR that never came) had finally been developed and was ready to launch. That’s not what these photos show, and not what my friend told me he’d found out through underground radio.

It seems Leica have struck a deal with a Japanese manufacturing company (Cosina came to my mind immediately) to have a line of cameras factory built, unlike current Leicas which are assembled by hand at one of their 3 facilities (in Canada, Portugal and Germany). He knows nothing about the specs for this new camera, but the fact that its called A9 would seem to link it to the M9, and externally they seem alike. What he does know is that Leica Canada has created a new product number and priced it at $3,000; this he heard from a Leica Canada contact of his who would reveal nothing else.

So that’s all we have to go on right now. My theory (and this is all pure speculation until we see an official announcement from Leica) is that Leica has come to the realisation that its current market model of high-priced cameras selling in small quantities is not going to get them through the global recession. Manufacturing cameras in series at Asian factories could lower production costs significantly, while keeping per-unit sales profit roughly the same; because the number of units sold would likely skyrocket, Leica’s total profit would be very generous. If the A9 really is just an M9 “made in Vietnam”, and they sell them for $3,000, even the best factory in the World won’t be able to build them fast enough. Even if the A9 is an APS-C version of the M9, it’s still a great price for a digital rangefinder and bound to be popular.

At some point this month we hope to find out the truth. For now, here are the two photos he sent me yesterday.

Related posts:

1. Leica to Branch Out into New Digital Venture
2. More Small Cameras: Leica X1 Field Report at Luminous Landscape
3. Leica S2: The Naked Test
4. CliQ 2011, Sept 6th: Nikon D800 Release? Here’s My Wishlist
5. Carl Zeiss Release 35mm f/1.4 Lens…and Their Inner Poet