David Littlewood wrote:
Probably because, AIUI, Zeiss are owned by a charitable foundation, thus
don't have the same short-term profit motive of the large stock exchange
listed companies.

Zeiss operates pretty much as a normal profit making company though -
they had revenue increase of 4% last year and I think and they pay a
considerable dividend to the foundation.

There is no reason why Zeiss couldn't make a profit from these lens and
most probably at least as much profit as Nikon does from similar ones.
It is rather unlikely they would use batch manufacturing for them like
Nikon did and low volume constant manufacturing can easily be profitable -
at least as long as you don't, or don't need to, retool or replace tooling.
You do have to get the volume approximately right.



David

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++