Erwin in depressed mode.............

[parisian]

From his blog;

The S2 camera is for Leica more an Formula 1 exercise (a Leistungs träger) and will presumably generate more excitement than profits.
The M community waits for the M9 and when this will be announced it will generate a disproportionate amount of interest and discussions, but will not send the buyers in droves to the shop. Stripped from emotion and nostalgia, it is and will be a niche product. I will buy the M9 as a blind date, but I am an aberration I have to confess.
The main focus of current and future buyers in the high-end photographic market is fixed on only one thing: a dslr with a 35mm sized sensor and lots of features and a huge system of lenses and accessories. This is the terrain where the announced R10 will have to do battle. If the Leica company wants to survive, the R10 will be the lifeline. That puts a lot of pressure on the design team.
If the R10 is just a product comparable to the main dslr competition, it will loose on momentum if not on excellence. The Sony 900 will not succeed versus the Nikon D3x and the Canon models.

[Clive]

Depressed? or Realistic?

I'm not sure where the S2 will stand amongst professionals. It has some competition which is already well established.

Erwin is correct in his thoughts on the battle the R10 will have to take on. I personally would love to see an R10 at the forefront of the DSLR world. The Sony a900 can support some superb Zeiss lenses, but are they necessarily that much better than the best that Nikon and Canon can produce?

A Leica M9? I do believe the M8s seem to have noise issues, something which the 'Canikons' seem to have addressed already, both in FF, eg the D700 at £1750 or the 5D Mark 2, or at the smaller sensor size, the D300. Leica needs to address this issue as a matter of priority.