The word is not to hang about and order now before the famous four, Sony, JVC, Panasonic and Canon up their prices by 15%. The Yen v the Pound is to blame so this time it’s not the manufacturers being greedy, it’s an overall 15% price hike across the board.
On an average spend of £5,000 you can add a further whopping £750 on top, times may be hard but when your business depends on goods made exclusively in Japan you are at the mercy of the money markets as well.
With NAB 2013 just around the corner some of you will be waiting to see what the competition have to offer but that will be at the expense of the new price increase…so what can we expect and will it be worth waiting for…
Panasonic : With one large sensor camera under their belt Panasonic must bring out a P2, 50Mbps, 10bit large sensor camcorder to stand a chance of affecting Sony F5 sales.
JVC : I think JVC will show a prototype shoulder mount 50Mbps 600 style camcorder.
Sony : Sony have flogged the large sensor to death so I think they will go down the Full HD fast motion capture like 500 fps on a 1/2″ or 2/3″ camcorder.
Canon : It’s rumoured that Canon are bringing out a C50 camera to go head to head with the Black Magic Cinema camera, though with no sign of ramping up production the BM camera does not as yet pose any threat to the competition.
Before the 2008 Crash, there was about 4p per Yen, then it doubled to 8p per Yen as it’s been seen as a safe haven in a crisis. Currently bubbling along at 7p per Yen.
Is this 15% hike solely to do with exchange rates or are there changes to EU taxation?
A quick look of the Y to $ rate over the last 10 years does show a drop from $0.12 to $0.10 to the Yen since last October – would that explain the healthy $2K rebate on the C300 that our US cousins currently enjoy?
What happened to the sony EH50 review? Sounds like I’ll have to hurry to avoid the price rise
HDW : Should be up later today (Monday 4th March 2013)
Does this fee hike only apply to Europe? What about the US?