In a recent interview with Dpreview, Yosuke Yamane (Vice President of Panasonic’s Entertainment and Communication business and director of its imaging business unit) explained the recently announced new alliance called L² Technology (Leica x Lumix) that is different than the existing L-mount alliance:
Yamane said the L-mount Alliance involves the three companies sharing information to ‘provide stable product compatibility among Alliance partners,’ primarily in order to build lenses that meet the specification, standard and compatibility targets of the alliance.
He went on to clarify that the L² Technology is a closer partnership, covering a wider range of topics, that will see the Lumix and Leica brands share resources and technology throughout the development process. ‘These two [projects] are completely different and we are promoting them on different axes,’ he said.
Yamane points to the new image processor in the S5 II as one of the first examples of this partnership, saying, ‘The combined expertise of the two companies in image processing enables this technology to achieve high image quality performance and high-speed arithmetic processing.’
As Yamane explained it, Panasonic and Leica have different expertise. ‘By bringing them together, pulling [them] into one box and mixing them up, we hope to see the benefits. For example, Leica has strengths in the expressive part [colour, image processing], where Panasonic has strengths in developing devices and in manufacturing.’ (Dpreview)
Leica and Panasonic formed a new alliance called L² Technology (Leica x Lumix)