Mark,
I'm serious (and not upset) when I ask this question.
Do you REALLY think that anyone cares that Olympus has the OM line still
"alive"?
When I was at PhotoPlus in NYC, I lurked a distance from the Olympus booth,
and in 20 minutes late on Saturday morning, I didn't see ONE person ask a
question about the OM cameras and lenses in the booth. But they were three
deep to look at the E10 and E20.
I doubt whether many people these days getting into photography know that
the OM line exists. Except for being: "that little old camera that my Mom
has in the closet or somewhere", why would anyone starting out think of an
OM system as a viable camera to buy? They've become seduced by the dark
side.
And I sincerely don't understand your comment:
If Olympus discontinued their OM line completely they
would get eaten alive by the 'photo press' and by
Nikon, Canon, and Minolta, which would seriously wound
their digicam sales.
Do you have first-hand knowledge of the mindset of the photo press that
you'd like to share? I'd actually be surprised if anyone cared if it went
away? How would Olympus' digital camera sales be affected by the
discontinuance of a old, manual-focus, out-of-production, essentially
out-of-support camera line?
I keep hearing this rant that Olympus "needs" to have the OM line around to
say that they still offer a "professional grade" camera line. What bearing
does that have? Is is true? or just an urban legend?
Skip
From: "M. Royer" <royer007@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [OM] Digital Camera that takes OM lenses (READ!)
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 13:13:36 -0800 (PST)
If Olympus discontinued their OM line completely they
would get eaten alive by the 'photo press' and by
Nikon, Canon, and Minolta, which would seriously wound
their digicam sales. It's kind of sad, but the Olympus
of today is more and industrial and laboratory company
than a consumer oriented company. Still they have nice
robust sales in the P&S and digital camera sales while
the OM system is more of a prestige and symbolic
system today. Olympus doesn't make much money off of
it, but it doesn't lose much money either. Kind of a
'why not?' situation. God I wish that was otherwise,
but it is'nt. Still I love my Zuikos :)
Mark Lloyd
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