Each lens’ cost is made up of fixed costs like wages and rents and variable costs like materials.

When sales fall, production is cut back. This reduces variable costs but hardly affects fixed costs, so the cost of each unit doesn’t go down as we might expect, but actually goes up because there are less units to absorb the fixed costs.

So price rises are due to falling sales. A perverse effect.

Now that the yen is in a 3-month low against the dollar, without falling US prices, we see that Nikon is simply trying to stay alive. By gambling big that people will pay even more for discretionary toys when they are worried about their own jobs and making ends meet. I fear this price increase when there is no wage increase will end badly for Nikon. I hope I am wrong.

Many governments, Japan included, are debasing their currencies by issuing more money. That creates inflation – which is exactly what they want, to counteract deflation of asset prices. But once the deflation has stopped (and it may have already), inflation continues. A yen, or a dollar, will not buy as much as it did before.

Pentax will have some money to keep going, Nikon won’t.

Who’d have though it with those price rises, huh?

As none of these lenses are on my wish list and I don’t shop in Japan, I couldn’t care less.

Is there really nothing leaked from PMA ?

Also, the cost of other raw materials has fallen CONSIDERABLY, during the past 12 months, which should have help offset the alleged losses caused by the “yen appreciation”.

A bit lower, I posted this, which MIGHT answer your question.

[b]“Since the global deleveraging begun, the demand for yen was artificially strong, due to the reversal of the carry trades being unwound world wide, so for that reason, BoJ could not fight it. But now, we are nearing the end of that game. Soon you’ll see manipulation once again …… although, the yen might be weakening all on its own.”[/b]

(I tried HTML tags. Sorry if I blew it and they did not work. The only way to find out is to try …..:-) )

Since the global deleveraging begun, the demand for yen was artificially strong, due to the reversal of the carry trades being unwound world wide, so for that reason, BoJ could not fight it. But now, we are nearing the end of that game. Soon you’ll see manipulation once again …… although, the yen might be weakening all on its own.

Perhaps ADMIN could post the currency charts i provided, and if new ones are needed/wanted, I would be glad to lob updates as often as requested.

Also, the higher prices on the old stuff, allowed them to put higher price tags on the new products being announced in this period, thus making the new stuff more reasonably priced.

The frenzy buying to beat the announced price increases, of course, did not harm any either.

All in all, Nikon has demonstrated a total lack of regard and appreciation for their LOYAL customer base, and it is not the p&s buyer, nor the newb who just got his/her first D40 that has kept them in biz up to now, nor are they they ones to dole out $1k+ for primes, nor for bodies upgrades on regular basis in the future. They want a loyal following & customer base, but not in a reciprocal relationship.

We’ll soon see if the price hike has back fired.

Their “beeneez” is changing ever faster, and they better learn to compete vs. a much tougher crowd: the electronics manufacturers. I would not discount Nikon becoming a division of some larger company, especially if they pull a couple more idiotic stunts like this one, and the global economy keeps on floundering, making the need for their products anything but a priority.

I bet, before long, someone will come-up with a drop dead body, with adaptors so to allow, their body to work perfectly fine with any line of mounts. All one would need to correct/finetune the body+lens, would be firmware tweaks, on the body side, which, could also be tweakable just like a computer BIOS, or even today’s DSLRs manual settings.

But for now, lets kick back and see what loyal friends at Nikon, will do next.

I would think the rises have nothing to do with currency and are due to profit margins on older designs. They tend to use non-eco-glass so perhaps this is another contributing factor along with re-tooling costs for low production runs, etc.

Nikon is a Japanese corporation and it clearly does not follow a “greed is good” business ethic. It clearly has a sounder business philosophy that puts equal emphasis on quality as profit.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a9Ji5Lx2C5So&refer=japan