Sigma announced today that they will be postponing the release of their newest digital SLR, the Sigma SD14, until late February or early March 2007. The SD14, featured at Photokina 2006, was originally slated for release sometime between late November and mid-December. Sigma won't comment specifically on what is causing the delay, other than there is a "known issue" that needs to resolved before the camera can ship.

Press Release

Postponement of the Sigma SD14 launch date.

Dear Customers,

I appreciate your strong and kind support for our products.

At Photokina 2006, we introduced our next generation digital SLR camera, the Sigma SD14. At the time, we made it clear that we would begin shipping production cameras late November 2006. Soon thereafter, we revised our release plan from late November to the middle of December.

Of course we continued our development work on the SD14 in preparation for production and shipping. During this process, we found one issue that occurred occasionally and only under certain circumstances. Initially, we felt that this could be solved with a programming or processing solution. However, after careful investigation and many attempts at a solution, we have come to the conclusion that we need to make a hardware change to fix this issue completely.

All of us at Sigma regret very much that this will result in a delay in the availability of the SD14 until late February or early March 2007. Retail sales should start in mid-March.

We deeply and sincerely apologize to all of our current and future Sigma users for this delay. We are confident that the <font>SD14</font> will be an important product for photographers. The results we have produced thus far have been outstanding. However, we feel that we would not be serving our community of present and prospective photographers well by delivering a camera with a known issue. We ask for your understanding. For our part, we will do our best to fix this problem and begin delivery of the SD14 as soon as possible.

The amount of interest shown in our digital imaging products at photokina 2006 and thereafter was very encouraging. Please note that the delay of the SD14 will not have a significant impact on the development work on other cameras or lenses. This work continues and we will announce delivery plans as they become firm.

At this time, I would like to once again express my gratitude to all of our Sigma customers for their support. Thank you very much for your understanding and we appreciate your patience in waiting for the SD14. We are confident it will be worth the wait.

Best regards,

Kazuto Yamaki
Chief Operating Officer
Sigma Corporation