Lack of up to date pancakes in M43?

Osa25 wrote:

«....Just need to attract fresh blood to m43, and that can only happen from the base up, not the top down. They already do that with the Pen and EM10 range. The Pen range is very successful with young people in Asia, and it has been profitable too....»

The reality is thisis a shrinking plattform, there are no hordes of young users, no growrth inmarket share. And Panasonic politely allows Olympus to drag out its death. They’ve moved on.

If Olympus was busy making progress on shrinking the EM10 and making radical new pancake lenses, OK. But that’s not what’s happening.

I disagree: both Olympus and Panasonic cpntinue to develop new lenses and camera bodies.

These new gears perform quite well and I dont understand people complaining.

Most people dont care about dedicated cameras anymore, as their smartphone offer them a very good experience, better than dedicated compact cameras of the previous decade.

Today, for wide angle shooting (24/35mm FF equivalent field of view), high end smartphones deliver excellent out of camera pictures in almost any lighting condition, thanks to computational photography.

For most users, the only missing feature is a long zoom. My guess is within 2 or 3 years, Samsung, Apple and Google will soon be able to offer such a feature in their flagship models.

Of course pixel peepers and purists will moan and criticize the IQ, but it will be more than good enough for most customers.

Which will kill the remaining offering of compact entry level cameras.

Within 5 years, IMO,  only pro and photog geeks will continue buying dedicated cameras.

These will be either specialized compacts, like Sony RX series, Olympus Tough, Ricoh Theta or Fuji X100*, or mirrorless high performance  ILC. DSLR will become vintage gear and slowly exit the market.

As regards ILC, different sensor sizes will still be available, from M43 to medium format, to match different needs.

Cameras and lenses manufacturers will struggle to survive to this transition, which will be as hard and competitive as the transition from film to digital 20 years ago (remember Kodak and Minolta).

Therefore, dont expect huge innovation, as there is simply not much money to invest in a declining market.