From m43rumors about Panasonic plans on this year

• Release new Micro Four Thirds camera bodies
• Release new L-mount S lenses for their Full Frame camera

All new m43 bodies can be actual rehash of existing ones.

Olympus Corporation and Panasonic Corporation have set the No. 1 market share by lens mount in the Japanese interchangeable lens digital camera market in 2019.

It says a lot about domestic Japanese market.

Ideally would be Leica acquiring Panasonic, but since whene dreams come true in this area?

It is very bad sign - IR interview about how all will be nice, usually publication happens 2-3 months before official announcement that all is cancelled.

DE: Are sales coming back in some areas while continuing to decrease in others? What is the general direction globally?

Mr. Yamane: Our sales are on the track to recovery. Especially in the US, where video demand is high, it has been recovering faster than we expected. China showed the fastest recovery, and our sales there went well at an online sales event. On the other hand, the negative effect of COVID-19 in Asia and Europe still remains and market demand in those regions has been recovering rather slowly. We will keep promoting the advantage of Lumix, namely high video performance in compact bodies, to meet rapidly rising needs of individual live streaming during the “Stay at Home” period. We do believe that a brand new imaging world will open up after overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ll never slow down our product development toward that new era.

They told this in March, in public interview. I hope good doctors already visited Panasonic top management to check the brain wiring.

DE: That actually leads right into my next question, which is about the strong focus on video for the S-series. What does that mean for the GH product line? It's been more than two years since the GH5S was announced, and three years since the GH5 was announced in 2017. Do you see more evolution of the GH line, or has that line's role been taken over by the S1 series?

Mr. Yamane: We introduced the S-series of full-frame cameras, and we target high picture quality with the S-series. However, there is some video footage which only Micro Four Thirds can realize, in terms of optimum depth of field, mobility, zoom ratio and so on. So Micro Four Thirds is also a precious asset for us to cover video shooting needs. The GH-series has been already used by lots of videographers, and it is used for high-end video shooting by one-man operations. So without fail, by using the GH, customers can make very attractive footage using the characteristics of Micro Four Thirds. We are now studying how we are going to evolve GH series going forward, [to make the most of its advantages].

Any GH6 cancelling announcement soon?

DE: The next question is about the G9. It has been three years since it was announced, and I think it was you who told us that it was always your dream to make a full-frame camera some day. Now that you have the full-frame, though, will Micro Four Thirds models maybe get less attention going forward?

Mr. Yamane: By introducing the G9, I think we could deliver the message to the global market that we are very serious about photography. And so [to support] this message, G9 is pretty highly evaluated, and sales volume-wise, is very big for us. How will we evolve the G9? We are now studying the balance between full-frame and Micro Four Thirds in terms of the value which we can provide by the large sensor size of full-frame, or the value which we can provide by the compactness of Micro Four Thirds. By studying this balance, we are now considering the future development of this category.

G9 replacement is not coming in 2-3 years at least.

DE: I guess also the LX100 II... our impression was that it and the original LX100 were quite popular, especially because of their very wide-aperture zoom lenses. I guess it's also compact and mid-range zoom, but has a very bright lens. Do you think that is also being affected by smartphones?

Mr. Yamane: Yes, as I said, this category is affected by the smartphone's expansion. But still, there are people who continue to use this model. But we have to admit that this category will be going down. And so as a camera business, we have to decide the priority of the development resources, which category is the most important. We have to study for the future.

This part is main reason of delaying interview, as Panasonic mostly cancelled manufacturing of all this cameras and did not want to warn their dealers and buyers.

https://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2020/08/20/panasonic-interview-covid-development-full-frame-micro-four-thirds

Announcement of huge m43 cuts (cuts of lenses being produced) and remaining cameras will follow from December to February, all depends on remaining stock levels basic decisions already made.

Good rumor is that Panasonic will continue to make only 3 total cameras (including compacts) that are not L mount.

I think it makes sense for Panasonic to follow the Sony and Canon route: aps-c for rf compact models and full frame for the dslr styled ones.

G9 and GH5 are getting redundant to S1/S1H. And the S5 shows the Panasonic willing to attract the actual G9/GH users to the 35mm digital camp.

Panasonic won't be making APS-C cameras, at least not yet.

They smartest idea had been to sell lot of engineering data and other intellectual property to Chinese companies. But they are not sure if US will like it now.

@gaman

Rumors is that presently Panasonic (as well as remains of Olympus that is walking dead already) are interested in m43 due to only one thing - very good economics of the lenses. As you literally need half the glass amount and can use cheaper and smaller construction but still charge nice money.

New interview

Nearly 3.5 years have passed since the launch of the GH5, and many customers are still purchasing GH5, but many creators still shoot movies in a Micro Four Thirds format. As I have assured many times, we will continue to develop products for Micro Four Thirds as well as Full Frame to meet the needs of a wide range of creators. Regarding the replacement model for the GH camera that you asked about, I will inform you but the information may be spread. Of course, we are considering it, and we look forward to seeing you there.

Just like Olympus, PR and words activity increases, real development and engineers allocated drops at the same time.

@Dark_Blue

Dreams, sweet dreams.

Sony m43 sensors have lowest priority and worst tech among all their lineups. Add here that Olympus is going down (will soon touch the ground and break into lot of small pieces).

No one will dedicate big resources now on m43 sensor.

And actually it is Sony who could turn the switch off for m43, not Panasonic.

@Energy80s

Panasonic is dead.

(Should not be a surprise as Panasonic L-mount is selling worse than their m43-mount stuff. And as we know most m43 stuff sold was from Olympus - which was not able to make it a sustainable business. )