Whan was the decison made to start pulling the NX plug?

Those who believe Samsung has recently decided to discontinue NX line and hope in NX future might be wrong.

It was roughly 1.5 half years ago when Samsung has made the decision to stop development of new lenses. The last lens they let to production was the 50-150. At that time no one expect for developers knew about this development hold. We could just get info about it later, when they officially annnounced a merging with the mobile division. That was the first official news release which indicated a strategy change to the general public.

NX500 was allowed to production, but NX50 could not make it. Most probably the future of NX line depended on NX500 success. They kept a close eye on NX500 sales development. Unfortunately they launched it at a high price. Do you still remember the price yoyo between 800-600-800-700-800-600-700-500. Samsung was testing the demand at various price points. This half a year demannd testing was a mistake. It allowed competitors to catch up with 4K video models. They should have launched NX500 with a 600 price and then keep it for long. Then probably the product would have been more successful and give higher chance to NX line to survive. This forum was full with NX1 users, but you still can not see many NX500 owners around. Normally the NX500 should have been 3-5 times higher than NX1 sales due to half price and similar IQ.

I regard the product planning also a strategical mistake. They should have launched the NX50 prior to NX500. Low success of NX500 (after all who needs an overpriced top technology without a basic viewfinder? Some, but not many) has killed the future of NX line and lead to withdrawal from such big markets as Germany and UK.

We van see that Black Friday did not really pushed down prices. In my read, it says that stock is so low that it will sell out without a struggle in this Christmas period, and no need for additional discounts to leave the market. After all many customers do not read news and not aware of the withdrawal, so they will take the remaining lenses and cheapo bodies (NX3300 and NXmini).

I would have rateher seen an 800 discount on NX1, rather than seeing that US Samsung gives away for free 300 units of NX500! They let the same amount revenue to vanish, but the NX1 discunting would have pleased the big non-NX1 community a lot. Instead they pleased mostly non Samsung DSLR owners. So they preferred to support anyone else with incredible offers but their loyal customer base looking for upgrade opportunities. Strange. Very strange. So I would not be surprised to see the US department to vanish soon.

Fingers crossed Korea will survive. Maybe then we will see again local premium Korean production, and not cheapo Chinese.