On 8/15/2012 2:41 PM, Ken Norton wrote:
>> (And the number of posts on TOP that mention owning it seem surprisingly
>> large to me. Might Oly have an actual breakout
>> winner on their hands?)
> Unknown.
And impossible to know outside the company, possibly even inside.
> According to the recent financials, the camera division is still
> in horrid shape.
Published financials always lag what's really happening, and what it means for
future financials. In Oly's case, they
may be lies, as well, whether intentional or not, given what's gone on there.
I've been there, at the headquarters of a Fortune 500 company, being pounded on
by the top people for clues as to how a
new initiative is performing - before, of course, anything meaningful is
possible to know.
> I'm hoping that the market is more widespread, but I have
> this little fear that the OM-D success is mostly within a narrow market
> segment.
I suppose that's true by definition. Still, if the E-M5 increases Oly's share
of that segment, and if it accelerates the
movement from other segments to MILCs, so that the segment grows too, it could
make a real difference. (Of course I
would think about that, as I'm one changing segment, from DLSR to MILC. Surely
there are a lot of people almost as smart
as I am. :-) )
I've given my B-school/Econ lecture on marginal profit on manufactured goods
here before. The increase in profit when
sales of a product exceed projections can be enormous. To the uninitiated, the
amounts can seem impossible.
This is just one of the ways financials can be misleading. Oly made a lot of
SHG lenses for the E system. My bet is that
there are a lot of them sitting in warehouses, unsold and likely to remain so,
carrying a lot of research, development,
tooling and other costs, in addition to actual manufacturing costs. Have they
been written* down? If not, what will that
cost (not cash, that's gone, but financials loss), and how long can they delay
it.
OTOH, if body sales are above expectations, and drive lens sales beyond kits
above expectations as well, the same
economic laws will generate much larger than expected profits from the lens
line.
> It's easy to say that most of my friends are buying them, but that
> doesn't mean much if I don't have many friends.
Yes indeed. I've just been surprised, compared to the later E-series and the
Pens, at the number of casual mentions of
E-M5s owned, even in posts about other cameras.
And I'm an optimist, with realist leanings, or maybe the reverse? :-)
Bi Directional Moose **
* Not with a pencil or pen, silly, deducted from the P&L.
** Well, I am a Pisces, two fish swimming in opposite directions. ;-)
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
--
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