How. Does reality factor in to Canon’s plans? If we’re talking about worldwide sales Canon was proud to concede FF mirrorlesss to Sony and anyone else. It was an unexpected shift in plans that brought about their FF mirrorless cameras, neither of which are truly competitive nor selling well. The RF mount coupled with the RP is considered by most (including Canon) to be a massive push from APS-C to FF, taking a vast majority of internals from their EF-M cameras to piece together the RP. I don’t know how you definen arbitrary, but if I was a Canon APS-C shooter (DSLR or mirrorless) that move would feel rather arbitrary to me, especially Canon being the only company that isn’t rumored to be developing an APS-C model with their latest and greatest mirrorless mount and lenses.
I’m just curious how you arrived at your conclusions?
We discovered the RF/EF protocol patent app last year, with a publish date of 2016.
So we have good evidence that the RF system was in R&D way back in 2016, if not sooner. Initial R&D probably started to occur as far back as 2014-15.
A capable camera such as an EOS R most likely takes in order to 2-3 years to develop, even an RP takes a while to develop. Don't forgot not only do you have to design the electronics, you have to design, study, re-design, study more the ergonomic design especially of an entirely new camera, then you have to create the molds, design the assembly, do all the multi-lingual translations, manuals, certifications (which can take over a half a year right there), etc,etc,etc.
None of these decisions by Canon (nor Nikon) were done on a whim and a drop of a hat. That seems to be an ongoing internet myth being perpetuated.
Also we have no idea how well the EOS R,etc are selling. we have Japan marketshare numbers for a short period of time, however, the mirrorless full frame numbers in Japan in actual units are so small, there are statistically insignificant.
