"[the market] is looking at a four or five percent increase through 2030 year-over-year." — Zeiss manager explaining why they got back into providing new lenses.
Okay, let's deal with the numbers first. Full frame lenses sold about 5m units in 2024. A 4-5% growth rate suggests as many as 6.5m units in 2030.
But here's why I call bull**** on Zeiss: they claim that they stopped introducing new lenses because the pre-pandemic predictions were that the market decrease would be "dire." So what was the number of full frame lenses sold in 2019? Just about 5m units. Yes, 2020 was a down year, but that was pandemic induced. 2021 was already back to 4.6m units, hardly dire, and the numbers have grown slightly each year from there.
Do I believe the 5% growth a year for five years bit? No. If my body shipment predictions are correct, for there to be long-term continued full frame lens market growth that high, the attachment rate—number of lenses sold per body—would have to go up.
Photography journalists don't tend to ask tough questions or attempt to illicit a full explanation of any assertion. Zeiss thinks that the above is a good explanation for why they didn't introduce lenses for five years. I'd say that's probably not the reason. However, if it was the reason, then Zeiss is basically saying they don't know how to analyze the market very well.
However, if you really want slog through the bull****, consider Zeiss's answer to why the new Otus lenses are about US$2000 lower in price than the old ones: "We’ve been able to modify the design and update it for a [shorter, wider] mount. This allows us to use less material, essentially, so we can continue to have the same exact quality in a less expensive and much smaller lens." Okay, take the 50mm Otus ML: it has an extra optical element compared to the older DSLR lens that was more expensive. Is Zeiss really trying to tell us they took US$2000 worth of metal out of the lens just because there's no mirrorbox on the camera?
I get it. Marketing is hard. But thinking that customers don't see through your statements is delusional. Tell us why the new Otus is a better lens than the original Otus. That could be as simple as a statement such as "every bit of the optical performance at 60% of the price." And since I don't believe that they made that price reduction simply because of "less material," then probably something like "we rethought our supply chain and manufacturing processes to get efficiencies that helped us lower our price without compromising our quality."
Come on guys, this isn't rocket science.
"We can't disclose the contents of contracts, such as licenses, to the public." — Canon's answer when asked about third-party lenses at CP+ (again)
A more likely, more honest answer probably would have been "we don't want to disclose such information”, since such contracts would have originated at Canon. Indeed, he continued "all I can say is that we are deciding the contents of contracts within our business strategy." Aha! That's tantamount to Canon saying they are controlling what third-party lenses do or don't appear. From observation, that seems to be manual focus and RF-S lenses, and probably because Canon doesn't want to make those themselves.
Personally, I don't know which approach I'd take if I were in charge of a camera/lens maker such as Fujifilm, Nikon, Sony, OMDS, Panasonic, or Sony. However, in my long tech career the one thing I do know is that whatever I decided, I would clearly communicate what it was to my customers, as well as the reason for the decision. In the conspiracy-theory brewing that dominates the Internet, to do otherwise is to generate enormous frictions against your business goals.
So here we are after a second consecutive CP+ trade show where Canon ducked the question and are now encountering yet another round of pushback from customers, and worse, potential customers.
Today, here's how I see the "mount openness" stands, from most open to least:
- K mount — effectively dead as there's only one supplier of very few cameras, but as far as I know, there are no bars to creating a K-mount lens.
- m4/3 mount, L-mount — you have to join an association and follow their guidelines, but once in and abiding by the rules, anything goes. The association controls changes/additions to the mount, not a company.
- Fujifilm XF, Sony E/FE mount — you have to sign an agreement with the company, which then provides you access to the full mount details and communications. You have to follow the maker's rules but can make any lens you want; you're not going to be changing or adding to the mount info, though.
- Nikon Z mount — you have to sign an agreement with the company, which will limit what lenses you can and can't produce, but Nikon seems to encourage others to fill holes in their lineup (e.g. Sigma, Tamron).
- Canon RF mount — you have to sign an agreement with the company, and you'll be told what lenses you can't make, and right now that apparently includes any full frame autofocus lenses.
While Canon continues to dominate the unit volume in cameras (around 50%), we've seen serious erosion nibbling away at them, particularly from two more open mounts: L-mount and particularly in the E/FE mount. Moreover, that erosion is happening with the most serious users, who value lens choice. In the telephoto realm, for example, an FE mount user can now find Sigma, Sony, and Tamron options that are compelling, while a Z mount user can find Nikon and Tamron optics. Canon users? You're stuck with what Canon provides, so I hope you like what they've done.
Year's before Canon discontinued the M series, I wrote that they would have to end-of-life that mount (and I have now been proven correct). Here's my next prediction: Canon will have to open the RF mount to third parties or else find entire segments of the higher end market that they've essentially ceded to Leica, Nikon, Panasonic, and Sony.
Ironically, interchangeable lens cameras are called "systems cameras" in Japan. I’d just like to point something out: if you limit the "system," you eventually limit your sales. Customers rebel when corralled, so Canon needs to take off the cowboy hat, get off their horse, and let the herd graze open land.
“The OM-3 is not a successor of the Pen series.” — OMDS management at CP+ [source: PetaPixel]
It was only a few weeks earlier that OMDS told Photographyblog "the OM-3 is effectively the replacement for the much-loved Olympus Pen-F”. So is Photographyblog lying, or is OMDS revising its statements? Or perhaps no one sent a company-wide memo as to the company position on this, so different managers are saying different things. It doesn’t matter which it is, this is the way you lose customer confidence. If Photographyblog was misleading us, OMDS needed to step in and correct that statement. If managers are saying different things, then OMDS needs to get them all on the same page and issue a company statement, not individual manager statements. If OMDS is revising its thoughts, then it should simply say “after hearing from our customer base, we are reconsidering producing a new Pen model.”
The world is a pretty topsy turvy place right now. But if you want to retain current customers and attract new ones, your messaging needs to be clear, consistent, and sometimes corrected publicly.
I’ve been pretty consistent about Olympus' and now OMDS’s product line failures: they need a compact m4/3 camera to compete with the GR-3 and X100VI—and I’ll remind them that they used to own this market with the Stylus 35 back in the film era—plus they really should take the Tough into m4/3, too. Neither of those are trivial design challenges, but they would also represent real sales (and customer) growth for the company if they existed. Squeezing another model between OM-5 and OM-1 that deviates mostly stylistically isn’t a big growth choice.
