It's certainly conceivable that they'd keep both, that's why I said
maybe. Until this rumour I was pretty firmly in the camp that M wasn't going anywhere any time soon. With that said, I have no more of a crystal ball than anyone else in here.
How the hell it follows? My logic behind why M
could disappear is based on a few things:
- The rumour here from a few days ago that said EF-M may disappear in 2021 (CR1 in all fairness)
- With a crop sensor camera in RF mount, Canon would be maintaining 3 different mounts for crop sensor cameras, and only one of those is an easy transition pathway to more expensive bodies (RF-S), though one could argue EF-S isn't a bad transition to RF due to the adapters available. I could certainly see Canon working to reduce the number of ecosystems they're supporting in a dramatically shrinking camera market, but whether EF-S or EF-M would become the sacrificial lamb remains to be seen.
- Past reports have implied that many manufacturers are intending to put more emphasis on higher-margin and higher-end bodies. I think that priority focus may lead to Canon trying to create more ways to get buyers into the RF mount, which makes sense for creating an RF APS-C camera which can direct first-time buyers toward the RF mount. If Canon wants to move people up market, and the top of the market will be RF full frame cameras, then making very affordable APS-C RF bodies will likely become a higher priority.
- EF-M fills a niche which a lot of people really like (myself included) - very small and portable and relatively price conscious. No question that there is a market for those products - the M50 still shows that today. However, if an APS-C RF mount camera can get to a comparable size as an EF-M body (likely in coordination with some size-conscious lenses), it may hold a very similar niche as EF-M but have greater value to Canon as a transition pathway.
Anyway, it's anyone's guess, but with 3 APS-C sensor cameras being maintained, I could certainly understand if Canon were to offload one or more based on past rumours. But again, I can't see the future any more than anyone else.