Olympus abdicating entry level ILS market?

sderdiarian wrote:

Thumbing through the glossy holiday ad brochures for Nikon, Sony and Canon that came in the Boston Globe, it struck me how seriously they take the entry level ILS market in terms of value.

Then checking Amazon I found that for under $500 you can purchase:

• D3300 w/24MP sensor and 18-55mm kit lens
• D3200 w/24MP sensor and 18-55mm kit lens plus 55-200mm lens
• a5000 w/24MP sensor and 16-50mm lens

Under $600:

• SL1 w/18MP sensor and 18-55mm lens
• a6000 w/24MP sensor and 16-50mm lens
• D5200 w/24MP sensor and 18-55mm kit lens

Under $650:

• D5300 w/24MP sensor and 18-55mm kit lens

Virtually all of the above are very competent cameras offering lots of growing room for a fledgling photography enthusiast.

Olympus, by contrast, currently has the E-PL7 and E-M10 as their lowest priced cameras, both on Amazon for $699 w/16MP sensor and 14-42mm lens. The older E-PM2 and E-PL5's are pretty much gone now, and never aroused much market fervor when available in any case.

Panasonic fares better for now, with the heavily discounted GX7 kit selling for $599 (now that's a value) and GM1 kit for $499 (also a great value). But at this time they appear to have nothing in the entry level pipeline, having remained silent on a G6 replacement, and with the GM5 kit selling for a real premium at $899.

The Olympus sales model clearly needs to include a value model similarly competent to the competition for long term success. They hopefully recognize this and are working on it.

Funny thing is, one of the key advantages touted for mirrorless at its advent was lower manufacturing costs. Interesting how this has yet to translate into the marketplace.

Just some observations from a long term Olympus FT/mFT user interested in hearing the take of others on this.

Wise words Steve - the answer is in your telling.  The mirrorless sales are obviously causing some pain in the dslr territory.  They therefore feel the need now to undercut mirrorless to retain market share.  Not so long ago $1,000 was the dslr break-point now it is $500 - speaks for itself. And the price will keep tumbling until it gets to the point of non-profitable.

Meanwhile if mirrorless camera retain their street selling values better it is more a sign of maturity that they can not be driven into price war speculation and that slowing sales of mirrorless are more reflected by user retention rates whilst dslr vendors become more desperate to subsidise entry into their mount systems in the hope that newbies will move up the feeding chain to high margin models and also that more than a few will be enticed into buying their high-margin lenses.