Olympus abdicating entry level ILS market?

007peter wrote:

markintosh13 wrote: Bull. Most entry level camera buyers buy cheap period. They don't buy lenses, they don't buy batteries, they don't buy flashes. They take a few photos, and don't understand why the results are terrible and put the camera on a shelf.

Mirrorless battery life sucks. They're not even remotely comaprable to 800+ of a dslr. When was the last time you bought a camera from a camera store or Best Buy without hearing the sell staff pushing your for accessory? Not everyone shop online ordering form B&H, particularly not the 1st time buyers. They walk into Best Buy or camera store, and they walk out with UV, 2nd battery, and that lame extended warranty.

Enthusiasts, who do buy lenses like PRO lenses, and flashes and accessories, on the other hand don't usually buy entry level cameras. And it's very tough to make a profit on a camera aimed at enthusiasts if you then price it at an entry level.

Yet, all "enthusists" were one time "entry-level-buyer" We all started somewhere, do we not?

1st time buyer do not fork out $1300 for an Olympus EM1. They started small with entry-level E-PM1, E-PM2, then build they way up to advance camera upgrade.

M43 users base is small in North America. Without an Entry-Level-Buyers to grow the M43 market, we are only selling to the dwindling based of existing M43 users, ergo, a dying market. In business, you either GROW or you Died. I don't want M43 to become a dying MySpace. I want M43 to become as popular as Instagram. And the only way to do so, is to have an Entry-Level-M43 camera that Lower the Entry of Barrier to camera buyer. We can agree to disagree.

Panasonic didn't want to compete in the low-end HDTV using LCD. Instead, Panasonic concentrated on the increasing esoteric Plasma TV, siting its superior contrast, superior refresh rates, superior color as the justification for its higher cost.

While there are "enthusist" who are willing to pay the plasma premium, not many people do. The result is 10,000 layoff and complete shut down of Panasonic Plasma TV business by October 2013.

Going niche didn't pay off for Panasonic then, I doubt its going to payoff now.

I find it amusing that you considered my original post in this thread to be overly simplistic, and you come out with these broad simplistic generalizations and straw man analogies.

Your wants and desires are irrelevant - competitive forces in play are complex and the market is mature to the point of saturation and has been eroded by substitute technology and lack of meaningful upgrade-worthy technology improvements. The camera market is very mature and generally saturated with the fixed lens devices that make up the vast majority of units in use – with some exceptions like the projected 2015 growth of more expensive cameras in the Asian market... that perhaps companies like Olympus are trying to tap into... however ILCs at this point are still niche, m4/3 are a niche in that niche, and most of the growth is projected to be in traditional DSLRs and upmarket/luxury mirrorless. Profitability for Olympus may lie in careful market segmentation, brand building and profit generating pricing.

My personal opinion is that marketshare growth at this industry-life phase for the sake of marketshare through a price based strategy is a recipe for terminal disaster of epic proportion. There are no easy answers, but I find your attempts to provide one to be understandable.

However, as an american journalist named Mencken once said, "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."