Viltrox announced they joined the L-Mount Alliance on September 11th, showing two L-Mount lenses (AF 16mm F1.8 and AF 28mm F4.5). For those of you with a short memory, the L-Mount Alliance revolves around Leica’s full frame mirrorless standard, and had Panasonic and Sigma as its other two initial members. They’ve now been joined by DJI and Viltrox.
Lens mounts are all about installed base. The more installed base you have in a lens mount, the more lens makers will want to sell lenses for the mount.
I’m going to use two recent mounts as an example:
- L-Mount — initiated in 2018, has an estimated best case installed base of 500k units in mirrorless
- Z-Mount — initiated in 2018, has an installed base of 3.3m units as of mid-2025 [source: Nikkei and Nikon]
Viltrox is a lens maker (so far), so why would they be targeting a mount that has a trio of low-volume camera makers? After all, those cameras would be basically Leica SL’s, Panasonic S’s, and the Sigma Bf (the fp models are no longer made).
True, Viltrox is currently not trying to take on Canon’s IP-locked RF mount, and they already support the popular XF (Fujifilm), Z (Nikon), and FE (Sony) mounts. But I don’t see tackling the L-mount as anything other than a marginal exercise on its face. Unless, of course, Viltrox was going to use the L-mount to enter the camera market in some way.
The rumor mill says that they are going to do just that, via an interchangeable lens video camera.
Which introduces yet another question: why a video camera?
Probably because of the consequences of directly entering the overall mirrorless camera market (the so-called hybrid cameras that this site prioritizes). What do I mean by that? Right now Viltrox sells XF, Z, and FE mount lenses. Fujifilm and Nikon seem “tolerant” of Viltrox at the moment, while Sony has the largest installed base and is a more open mount licensor. But none of those companies would be at all happy with Viltrox targeting their main camera businesses.
We’re close to a crossroads. DJI and Insta360, for instance, have effectively taken on the market between smart phones and dedicated cameras (as did GoPro, who has stalled in that market, partly because of the better and faster moving Chinese entries). With social media being by far the primary use case for cameras these days, smartphones have the advantage, the Osmo/360/GoPro cameras have the next best position, and mirrorless cameras the worst position. That said, there’s still clear volume available in the dedicated camera market, and I don’t see Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, and Sony going to give up their 85%+ dominance of that to anyone, and definitely not the Chinese.
By targeting video, Viltrox would be trying to slide in alongside the dedicated cameras, much as RED tried to do when it first started out.
The real underlying issue is this: do the Japanese companies have enough CAPEX to defend mirrorless against the eventual China entrants? Can the Japanese defend by innovation, or will they resort to active stifling (e.g. closing lens mounts to others)? But the jury is out on that. I, for instance, believe that Canon’s lower volume growth rate in RF compared to Nikon’s Z is a direct result of Canon’s IP lock on their lens mount.
At a minimum, Viltrox’s entry into L-mount gives them experience with the mount prior to eventually launching cameras. By building out an L-mount lens set now, any eventual Viltrox camera then immediately has a lens set, and some owners of other cameras (e.g. Leica, Panasonic, Sigma) now have another choice that works with lenses they’ve already bought.
So who’s most vulnerable to Viltrox at this point? Simple: Panasonic.
Leica is distinguished by a luxury demand audience that is well proven, though low volume. I don’t see anyone’s entry into the L-Mount is really a threat to Leica (which is probably why Leica agreed to make it a mount partnership in the first place). Sigma doesn’t really seem to care how many cameras they actually sell. Sigma’s low-volume camera business is a hobby playground for their design teams, where they constantly test out ideas, but aren’t dependent upon revenue for anything.
So if an L-mount camera does come from the Chinese, it’s Panasonic that is most in the crosshairs. It’s impossible to ascertain Panasonic’s exact L-mount volume, as they also sell m4/3 cameras, but Panasonic only sold 620,000 mirrorless cameras in the last four years, and not all of those were L-mount. Let’s say that was 2/3 L-mount: that’s about 100,000 units a year. I remain astounded that Panasonic hasn't moved their higher level professional video group to L-mount yet. We now have Canon in Cinema/Stills with RF, Nikon is Cinema/Stills with Z, and Sony in Cinema/Stills with FE. That allows full crossover between the stills only, hybrid (stills/video), and dedicated video (Hollywood, videography), and makes 100% sense to me.
So, will we get a glimpse of Viltrox Video soon? The big International Broadcast Convention is next week in Amsterdam. If Viltrox is going to enter video soon, that would be one of the venues to make a splash (NAB in the US would be another).
