Originally posted by Unsinkable II I'm sure you're not ignorant in many other areas. I have shipped well over 100 million products around the world over the years (many of which I was in charge of design and engineering), so I have a pretty good understanding of production issues, costs, and margins dependent on product category, hype, or lack-of, branding, marketing, etc, etc.
I have no doubt you know much about productions issues and costs. But again, the pricing department of every company is separate from the manufacturing department. Product pricing relies on many more inputs other than just the manufacturing cost. But I understand your point - that most likely products will not be priced below cost (some exceptions).
Originally posted by Unsinkable II The reason I replied to your post is not that you said a FF could be US$1K; it certainly can and will be at some point. The reason is you said that an APS-C DSLR could be US$200. That is just such incredible tosh, that it needed calling-out. A single lens reflex mechanism costs LABOUR to create. Electronics gets cheaper, labour does NOT. You might be interested in reading about Baumol's Cost Disease.
Like I said, the $200 statement was somewhat of an exaggeration to get to my main point that - no matter how low in price MF goes, there will always be cheaper options in the smaller formats, and that a cost benefit analysis to individuals will always apply.
I bought my Pentax Kx new from Amazon with the 18-55 and 50-200 for $550. I don't see it as tooooo far of a stretch for a $200 APS-C DSLR in the future. Perhaps, we'd lose out on build quality. If FF goes down to 1k, then something must happen to push down APS-C prices to a competitive point. I mean, look at the compact digital camera market. Pressure from smartphone cameras has pushed down prices on budget compacts to sub $100. Sure, there are a few high end compacts like the S110, G12, and LX7, etc which command a higher price point, but the point still remains.
Right now you state that the SLR mechanism takes labor to make. I totally agree with you. But the awesome thing about competition is that it forces companies and individuals to innovate. This is purely speculative, but today it may seem like a waste to develop cheaper manufacturing costs for the SLR mechanism, but perhaps in the future, if prices drop fast on FF, companies will have no choice but to innovate or give up the product line.
We're already seeing a large move to mirrorless. I love my optical viewfinder (I really want bright, large FF VF), but perhaps in the future that will be a "luxury" in a cheap APS-C line dominated by mirrorless.