Olympus abdicating entry level ILS market?

007peter wrote:

Impulses wrote:

007peter wrote: Canon is sacrificing the profit margin on a SL1 to locked the new user into their System, away from Micro43, or other mirrorless competitor. @$324, I admit, I find it nearly irresistible.

I'm not disputing your point because I actually agree with you, a race to the bottom isn't remotely profitable for any of the smaller players... That being said, Oly's camera division hasn't exactly been doing fine, financially speaking.

The entire point of Low-End isn't to make money, but to maintain growth.

Many of us begin Micro43 journey with a cheap Olympus E-PL1, E-PL2, E-M1, E-M2. It is the entry-level-camera that attract new users into the fold: hence the growth. Then later, you up-sell them to higher end advance models like EM10, EM1, GH4.

Without entry-level-camera to entice new users into the fold, M43 base will dwindling. Going premium is a profitable short-term solution, but a long term disaster in the making.

I have to agree. Name a car manufacturer that doesn't have a volume sales leader as the entry portal to their brand. Maybe Rolls Royce and Ferrari? Hardly volume leaders, but rather ultra-premium niche players, something Olympus and Panasonic clearly are not.

The arguments by some that Sony is perhaps "dumping" their 24MP a5000 at an MSRP of $500 strikes me as a stretch. I'm guessing this price was set for their volume leader model to make money, just not as much profit as their mid-tier models. That's part of a fundamental marketing strategy of getting new customers in the door and later keeping them through upgrades.

Now, selling cameras that were released at $1100 MSRP with kit lens for a desperation price of $599 (GX7) or a camera that was released at $749 MSRP with kit lens for $499 (GM1), that's another matter. That's more likely indicative of overly optimistic MSRP's and sales projections.

Olympus? Their release of a camera in 2014 without a built-in EVF for $699 (E-PL7) simply flies in the face of what the competition is doing and the marketplace is buying. That they have no current model to compete with the $599 24MP a6000 with EVF, or the $499 24MP a5000 without EVF is frankly startling to me. Perhaps the E-PL7's price will be reduced quickly, but that approach risks sowing distrust in their pricing by purchasers.

When I first bought into Olympus SLR's in the early 80's I purchased an OM-2S for myself and an OM-10 for my wife. Up to last year they at least had the E-PM2 with the E-M5's great sensor.

I'm simply hoping they're working on a similar gateway model now. There have been a lot of opinions expressed here; my personal take is such a model is needed to maintain the brand.

Good discussion, though, and generally polite - thank you all.