Exclusive: Olympus and Panasonic guard their investment in Micro Four Thirds
While the Four Thirds system was proudly announced as an open standard when it was launched in 2002, the latest version is designed to lock out competitors
Olympus and Panasonic are shutting out other manufacturers in their development of the Micro Four Thirds system.
Announced on Tuesday morning, the Micro Four Thirds system is a new version of the Four Thirds standard developed in 2002 by Kodak and Olympus. Speaking to BJP, a spokesman for Olympus says that the original system was established 'as an open standard to encourage other companies to support it. However, now that five years have passed since the announcement of the standard in September 2002, we believe that the intentions of other companies with respect to this standard have been determined'.
Only Leica, Panasonic and Olympus have developed cameras using the Four Thirds System, and only Sigma, Leica and Olympus have lenses supporting the standard.
'We are not planning to open [the Micro Four Thirds Standard],' the spokesman tells BJP. 'Instead, whenever a company expresses a desire to support the standard, the existing supporters of the Micro Four Thirds System standard will decide whether or not to accept the support based on their assessment of how serious the company is about contributing to the dissemination of the standard'.
Panasonic developed two cameras using the original Four Thirds System - the Lumix DMC-L1 and DMC-L10. Leica released two years ago the Leica Digilux 3. Olympus has been the most enthusiastic supporter of the standard having released 10 Four Thirds cameras including the E-3, E-420 and E-520.
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