[LRflex] Re: The DMR as a Collectible.

Andy Wagner  pondered:

>One thing that really has me courious is Leica's reputation for 
>backing their products. Up until just a few years ago you could send 
>any camera into Leica and get it repaired. They just recently stoped 
>repairing SCM if I recall. Even if the DMR is dead how long will 
>Leica back it? Furthermore as they build their inhouse programing 
>dept. might we not see a ver. 1.3 anyways esp if the R10 is 20 months out.

I cannot find the reference, so I may be wrong (as usual!), but I 
believe that US law requires makers supply parts for 7 years.  If not 
7, then at least 5.  In Canada it's 5 years  I'm not sure what the EU 
legislation is.

This does not mean that parts will be available for 5 years, and 
conversely, parts may be available for much longer.  It all depends.

A maker is obligated to keep a 'reasonable' amount of parts to 
fulfill the term of any legislation.  However, if a certain model has 
a severe run on certain parts, due to a repeating failure, he may run 
our of certain parts before the time limit.  Legislation usually 
allows for this by maintaining that, say, 90% of parts must be 
available for X years.  Of course, there are some products out there, 
which have certain parts which rarely, if ever, fail.  Thus, if one 
of those parts fail, in the product you have, you may well be able to 
buy the part 40 years later. (Makers seldom throw out repair parts - 
of any age!  Mind you, when they sell 'em to you, they charge for storage!)

In the case of the DMR, see my previous post on electronics 
reliability.  DMRs which survive the first year should run for 10, 
easy.  So parts should not be a big problem for many years. And, 
given how the digital world is progressing, we should all be using 
something else, long before Leica run out of parts.

>Something here doesn't sit quite right from a marketing standpoint. 
>If all this is true,Leica will not have an R or digital Reflex 
>product for 20+ months. No DMR would kill any R9 sales. Film ves 
>digi arguments can be what they are, but the fact is, film camera 
>sales are pretty much dead.  What doesn't add up here?

I don't think running out of DMR's was in Leica's game plan.  They 
had Imacon make what they thought they'd need, knowing that if they 
ran out, too soon, Imacon would do another run.  That, of course, was 
before Imacon was bought by Hasselblad.  Now, Imacon (Hasselblad) 
view Leica as a competitor and their working relationship has broken 
down.  And, yes, it  does put Leica in a very difficult spot, with 
regard to R9 sales.  I believe that Leica had expected the DMR to 
slowly sell out their stock of R9s, and they'd be "clean" in time for the R10.
Now, that seems unlikely.

Earlier, some have said "there must be contracts governing this sort 
of thing".  Perhaps there are.  But a broken contract can take years 
to settle, through the courts.  The R10 will be out long  before 
Leica could force Imacon to cooperate, so the point is moot.

As Imacon was also doing the v1.3 firmware for the DMR, that too, is 
likely "toast".   Although I'd love to see Leica do v1.3 on their 
own, I fear it is unlikely, unless [a] Imacon sell Leica the source 
code and let Leica finish it (unlikely, but possible if Imacon wants 
to recover some money from a failed project)  or the R10 code (not 
yet written) proves to be easily adaptable to the DMR, in which case, 
they might use v1.3 (or even v1.4) as a way to debug code for the future R10.

As I said, I don't think this was Leica's original game plan.  They 
will now, I'm sure, put all their efforts into the R10.

Meanwhile, for those of us with DMRs... enjoy them. They will 
continue to take fine photographs.  Repairs will be available, I'm 
sure, for a sufficient time to see out our use of the cameras.  And, 
often, collectors don't care if it works or not, so long as they HAVE it!

Enjoy!




---

David Young,
Logan Lake, CANADA

Wildlife Photographs: http://www.telyt.com/
Personal Web-pages: http://www3.telus.net/~telyt




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