John,
Thanks for the link. This is an interesting article, and one without speculation and hype. It was interesting to get a peek into Kaufmann's perspective, though he rightfully is playing a bit more close to the vest. Not sure I came away with much more of an impression than the timelines are going to be long for development and products. There might be a lot in the pipeline, but it sounds as if they are tackling a couple things at a time and not going to talk about too much.
His comments about the "mis-match" of Summarits and M8 with respect to price was interesting, along with the hint that there may be a CL type offering under consideration. Not committing anything, but just reading between the lines of his comments.
I still remain confused about the R line. He suggests something very interesting, which I think good, but he is non-committal about other things that folks may still be concerned about (backward compatibility of R lenses). I am not going to speculate on that topic at all, since there has been enough of that already.
His comments about the Digilux 3 were also a bit like shifting sand. He does not seem particularly warm to it, but there may be some longer range commitments that must be supported. Sounds like he likes the concept, but is not completely convinced it is enough for a larger professional customer base at all.
He still seems to have on some rose colored glasses with respect to service. There may be fewer really problematic issues than get blown to larger perceived proportions on the forums, but there must be an awful lot of Leica service techs having a lot of "bad days" as he describes things. He still seems to be avoiding the issues of turnaround times and accurate repairs/adjustments. Because he does not want to talk about them does not mean they do not exist and are not real issues for customers.
On balance, his message was more of stability with a positive tone, which I think is important, given all the tumult lately. Thanks again for pointing this out. Good read.
LJ
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