Henning, what I wanted to point out is that the simple cameras are already sold at a price so high that the profit Fuji makes on them does not represent a motivation to produce better cameras.
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It is about profit. Selling a cheaply made camera at the maximum price the user is willing to spend is more profitable than selling a better quality camera
Eugen, the profit margin per camera is definitely
not high with these cameras. I can ensure you that from camera factory visits. For decades the profit margins per camera of very cheap cameras (both film and digital) have been very low (often only 5-10%). It works only with very high production volumes.
For Fujifilm and Polaroid this business model works mainly because of the film sales. Instant integral film is extremely complex, difficult and expensive to produce. It is by far the most complex and most high-tech film type of all films. E.g. with current Polaroid film after exposure 50 (!!!) different chemical reactions occur! And some of them have to go simultaneously, and some in sequences, one after the other. It is a kind of miracle that it works at all !
Because of this complexity instant film has the highest costs per picture of all film types. To lower the hurdle for customers, and to partly compensate them for the highest film costs both Polaroid and Fujifilm offer cheap cameras. To make this medium generally attractive to a broad range of different customers.
Those are much more expensive to be produced but the selling price can not be levered up to the sky.
Of course a better camera would be more expensive to produce. And Fujifilm would sell less of them. Nevertheless it would make sense for them to add such models to the line. Because
1. Those photographers who want a better quality camera would also be willing to pay a higher price. None of them would expect that such an improved camera would be sold on the extremely low price level of the current cameras. So the higher production costs would be compensated by the higher selling price.
2. Fujifilm could expand with them to further markets, like photography enthusiasts and professionals. For prof. wedding photography such improved cameras would make much sense. In the last decade I have used my Instax Wide on every wedding I have shot as main photographer. An excellent addition to standard film. The couples and guests have always been very excited by the results. With a better camera this business field could be extended significantly, and I could do even much more on weddings with it, satiesfying the clients even more.
3. The better camera models would sell in lower volumes, but the users of these cameras would buy much more instant film on average for it compared to the standard user of the cheaper models. A wedding photographer who is using it would on average buy more than hundred packs per year.
Me e.g. would not invest money in such a camera for the simple fact that the film format is too tiny in my opinion. (I am not a stamp collector.) An entirely other story would have been for me with the packfilm format.
Looks like you are not well informed about the instax system: There are
three different formats: Mini, square and wide. And the wide format has similar dimensions to packfilm.
Best regards,
Henning