Is Canon going MF this year?

The Canon rumours were floating around the web already last year before Photokina. In this pre-PMA time, I also found some MF rumours, I find this one pretty interesting:


Medium format digital costs $12K - $30K+ currently, I believe...That's real money, current manufacturers are making a profit hand assembling these cameras in almost a boutique environment - see the Luminous Landscape Videos' Phase One visits, where they show a very small assembly room with only a few work benches...Wouldn't a company already making it's own 35mm format digital sensors and bodies/lenses be in a pretty good position to expand into the larger format? Wouldn't additonal development costs to create a new product line be much more affordable than for an entirely new start-up company?

If conventional wisdom barks out that all those white super-telephotos seen in photog gallery shots at sporting events are a fantastic sales tool, would it be a good thing for Canon to point to studio and landscape world class pros using Canon MF equipment? You may only be looking to buy an entry-level camera, but you've heard Annie Leibovitz uses Canon, and you want to buy the company the pros use...

I think they are going MF this year. They won't devalue their 35mm line by just coming out with a new line of high resolution lenses and ever-more pixels jambed on a sensor. It's going to be something new, probably announced at PMA, but not available until later this year, they will want to hype it's exclusivity first...They made a 50 f/1.0 for bragging rights, they will do something similar again (granted, that's not a direct example for my argument as it really was a trick lens that didn't stay in the catalogue for long - but they spent a lot for something they knew wouldn't earn back it's development costs).