>>4246526because they used to be a super premium, high quality manufacturer exclusively, just like hasselblad and other similar camera and lens manufacturers that were present back then. none of them really cared about controlling the consumer market, they were only investing into research and development of the best possible cameras and best possible glass there can be, they didnt care about money, all of them were just chasing the title of ''the best.'' and you dont hear much news about companies like those, because they are not popular with casual consumers and dont spend much on marketing and other nonsense to appeal to general public, because they dont make their products for them and hence dont care about them. you can read about kreuznach, hasselblad and voigtlander rivarly, it used to be just like nikon vs canon vs sony of today, except it was in their own world, separate from consumer grade manufacturers such as nikon, canon, zeiss, leica, etc...
anyway, somewhere during 1970's or 1980's is when voigtlander started dabbling more and more into consumer market, until it all went downhill in 90's. (and by downhill, i mean they left the high end professional world entirely and focused only on consumers, except they still didnt invest in marketing and global reach, as much as other companies like zeiss, leica, fuji, nikon, canon, sony or panasonic did.) that paired with the fact that they still made manual focus lenses in order to not have to sacrifice on lens design and image quality, meant that in modern day market aka post late 90's and early 2000's market, where 99% of lenses had some form of super fast autofocus, meat that casual consumers didnt really want to be bothered with manual focus and so less and less people are buying their glass.
but for some reason, as of 2018 up to 2023, they have sold more lenses than ever. (probably because of all the hipster faggots and film cameras becoming mega popular, i dont know, dont ask me)
