I don't think that this lens has much to do with market share but more to adding a further zoom telephoto to their clutch of 40-150mm lens grouping and in the process of offering something in a halo class as an alternative to the Panasonic 50-200. Which lens is as much a reasonable choice to the new OMS lens rather than a direct competitor as you have clearly shown.
The way this lens is made and priced puts it into the small turnover, quite expensive class, where there is never enough volume of made stock on head office warehouse storage to cause "cost of inventory" concern. Made on bench more or less to keep a small but steady trickle of sales at fully achieved decided selling price that was calculated to make a profit on every lens sold. What is there not to like? A small trickle of decent profits for a fairly low invested cost (by normal standards). It would likely cost more to build smaller, lighter, cheaper (lower margin), more popular lenses and create a world-wide inventory that would buffer demand without the prospect of delays in supply. Those who are very keen to buy a halo level lens might find it easier to wait a while if necessary for the delivery of such a lens.
Makes sense. And important to commend them for coming up with what seems to be, by all measure, an optically excellent lens designed and manufactured by them, even if it won't sell in large volume because of the value proposition. Hoping this is the beginning of a resurgent OMS. Competition is good.
Well part of the deal for having these types of exotic halo lenses is that they are also unlikely to come to the, market in droves. Maybe one per year. But once introduced they will be available on trickle-supply as long as the specific castings of lens components last.
I don't know enough about lens element manufacture but they either ground to specification on demand or perhaps they are better batch produced into stock and shelved until needed.
Certainly making extrusion moulds must be expensive and the sourcing of lens shells, be they extruded metal or plastic, might be best as a batch of whatever size that is economic. These would almost certainly be shelved until demand used them up. More easily sourced components would obviously be bought in as necessary.
Don't forget the packaging and documentation - once set up it could be churned out and stored - perhaps harder to make in small quantities.
Obviously we need a production engineer to comment here as I am only an accountant who thinks about how small volume production might be organised when some of the necessary and expensive components can only be produced in substantial quantities.
Ideally the whole product could be made up in one smooth production swoop but the cost/storage issues of the high-price, slow selling, items would be enough to make the most hardened bean counter wince just a little.
The solution is to make a batch of the big-batch specialised components and store them to be assembled in relatively small quantities to meet the demand. Meets the investment/risk equation as best can.
The main issue is just how many of these components to batch up and what to do when the stock of specialised components dries up .... Make another batch? How well did the previous assembled batch sell?
Because of the bespoke assembly and storage of parts necessity the top-end halo products are always going to be expensive.
The good news is that a company is unlikely to invest in expensive halo products if it is thinking of moving away from producing the basic product that uses those products.
2:20 for 800m is fast
