After reports surfaced last week on the Fred Miranda forums stating that Zeiss was leaving the photography industry, Zeiss has put out a statement. The initial report said the Zeiss Australian distributor claimed that Zeiss was leaving the photo industry. Given past photo and cinema lens releases, the death of the ZX1, and outlets reporting that communication with Zeiss had ended, it seemed believable.
Now, Zeiss has apparently released a statement. It states unequivocally that Zeiss is not leaving the photography industry. The company says they’ve faced some challenges during the pandemic, as every company has. They also talk about their continued ventures into smartphone camera modules.
Zeiss has not withdrawn from the photo lens market.
A simple look at https://www.zeiss.com/consumer-products/int/photography.html or amazon.com shows that we are still promoting and selling our photo lenses.
But we have to face the facts. In the first months of the pandemic, the global market declined significantly and irreversibly. And companies have to adapt.
And, of course, we are bringing our unique expertise to mobile imaging. Because it is also clear that consumers, as well as ambitious and professional photographers, increasingly prefer their smartphones for all-day photography.
Zeiss says they are still promoting and selling their photography lenses through the Zeiss website. But they’re also still promoting the Zeiss ZX1 on the Zeiss website, linking to multiple retailers to purchase one. Every single retailer linked form the Zeiss website lists it as being discontinued. The company’s photography lenses don’t show as discontinued, however quite a few of them are listed as “Special order” or “back-ordered” at a number of retailers.
Olympus denied they were getting out of the photography market, too. And they denied it for a long time before ultimately admitting they were selling up. Their employees didn’t even find out about it until the rest of the world did. The situation here with Zeiss is a little different, but I guess we’ll see how it all plays out over the next couple of years.
For now, though, the statement says that Zeiss says they’re not leaving the photography world.
We’ve reached out to Zeiss for confirmation and will update this article when we receive a response.
[via DPReview]
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