a700 Discontinued?

[Elisha]

So anyway i was at the Sony Store today to see if they had any sales on DSLRs.
not much price reduction on the a700 and the sales guy told me that it was being discontinued.
i didn't believe him so he showed me their order system where the status of the a700 status was "Store Transfer Only". Apparently that means that they can only get one in from other stores ans stock will not be replenished from the warehouse or Sony Canada.
The other current DSLR models showed a different stock status.

I'm not sure I'm 100% convinced but it does make sense to some extent. Can anyone in the U.S. check with their local Sony Stores to confirm?

[dr4gon]

Well, sounds good to me, PMA is only a week away!

[Elisha]

His reasoning was that the a900 replaced it. But i think the model to replace it is coming soon and not actually the current a900.
when you think about it, the Canon equivalent, the D40 has already been replaced and the Nikon D300 is rumoured to be replaced as well.

[dr4gon]

Some rumor about a nikon d5000 (rumor for the name is awful) to replace the D40s/60s

Also D400 is due out before July 2009 aparently, so whatever is in it, will likely be inside a sony as well .

[sparkie1263]

That is is big price jump for a replacement.I thought that Sony wasn't releasing any new bodies this year. We will have to wait and see.

Frank

[dr4gon]

They are, just later like June/July (supposedly)

[laydros]

Yeah, the announcement was that they weren't releasing any new bodies at PMA, so that still leaves later as a possibility. But this is exactly what the salesperson at Wolf said, that the A700 was discontinued, and she also thought it was replaced by the A900. I'd certainly be willing to accept the A900 dropping into the A700's old price.... not a problem at all!

At any rate, I think the fact that both Wolf and Sony have it discontinued all but confirms that it really is (esp. if Sony Style says it is). I guess they are just going to have a gap of a few months that it is not available, which is strange. Especially when Canon still has lots of 40Ds available, and Nikon still has lots of D80s available, months after the 50D and D90 were released.

[seanhoxx]

For what it's worth, I called Sony style in Colombus Ohio, I asked if I could talk to somebody in cameras as I had lots of questions. I was on hold for a couple of minutes and then a guy was on I said I was planning on getting a 700, but it was going to be about 6 to 8 weeks, would that be a problem, is there a new model going to be out right after i buy this, etc. I then said I had heard that the 700 was being discontinued. The clerk said they had several 700's in stock, if they happened to be out of stock would be able to get one in in only a few days. He said he knew nothng about being discontinued but that they 'Sonystyle' were to 'push / upsell' the 700's as much as possible. He wondered if maybe Sony was going to have some new models comming out? but didn't have anyhting on that.
So make out of that what you will.

[dr4gon]

Well with the latest A200/300 rumor along with the Nikon camp rumors, I find it hard to believe there will be no announcement in a week's time.