Isn't Sony's market positioning a little strange here? Sure with a lower price tag A850 will sell more than A900, but how much of that market share cannibalizes on A900 market share?
My guess: The A900 probably isn't even being made any longer. Products like these are made in batches, and presumably they have enough in stock to get them through until an A950 or A1000 is launched. The profit for Sony isn't in the bodies but in the lenses. As a relative newbie to the market, what matters is gaining market shares.
There's a reason why Nikon and Canon are selling their top product for much higher prices; it's the only way to make money in a low volume market. Very simple mathematics. Sony can't afford that luxury. By selling as cheap as possible, they get several advantages:
- They gain market shares
- They increase volume, lowering the production price per unit
- They sell more lenses
- They gain momentum and create a positive feeling within their organisation
- Each production run spends less time in the warehouse, lowering capital cost as well as enabling Sony to launch a new model whenever it's ready. (Remember the Olympus E-1? It took ages before Olympus understood that they had to dump the price to make space for a new model.)
For a photographer who buys cameras at this level, a typical selection of lenses will cost much more than a couple of camera bodies, so the price of those lenses should in theory be more important than the price of the bodies. But the human brain doesn't work that way. It tends to think something like "$1,999.99 for a 24.5MP full frame camera body! Wow, that's a bargain! I'll save $6,000.01 on a D3X. Better buy one before it's too late :lecture: ."
All the psychologists, priests, philosophers, bean counters, communication experts etc. at Sony's marketing department probably figured this out
before they acquired Konica-Minolta. They also knew that it's a gamble, but selling high-end cameras cheap is one of the smallest gambles of this operation. The cost of setting up production lines, establishing DSLR departments in Sony shops worldwide, advertising, logistics etc. are much more expensive, and without gaining a position in the market, those monies are lost anyway.
High-end camera bodies is not where the big profits are for Sony, but they need to sell them to position themselves, so that they can sell large volumes of low and mid end cameras. I believe it's a calculated expense.
Notice another thing:
While Sony's low-end bodies look very slick, the high-end bodies look much more utilitarian, and even more so than the Canon and Nikon equivalents. I believe that's a marketing decision as well. If the camera looks as "ugly" as the A850/900, it must be a "pro" camera, since professional photographers presumably don't care what their cameras look like, as long as functionality and image quality is great. It's kind of the camera industry's version of a Jeep.
The guys at Sony know what they are doing, and they will most probably succeed. $1,999.99 for a 24.5MP full frame camera body! Wow, that's a bargain! I'll save $6,000.01 on a D3X. I want one
