FTF6040C 24 MP Color CCD:
''Specifically designed for professional digital still applications''
Maybe, but I am still that this is marketing spin rather than a "designed for Leica" product, for several reasons:
1. The data sheet is probably more accurate in its description as being "designed for professional digital photography, scientific and industrial applications." That sounds like Teledyne Dalsa is offering it to camera makers inter alia, but not with a specific customer like Leica behind the product's creation.
2. Leica has always used Kodak sensors, so it would be a significant effort to adapt its M9 design to this quite different sensor.
3. The sensor has no better specs that Kodak Truesense sensors of the same pixel size, and worse in respect of full well capacity and linear dynamic range, and thus in low ISO performance; why would Leica accept the cost of changing horses for no clear IQ gain?
3. Leica has mostly or entirely used custom sensors, not offered to competitors, and certainly not announced before the Leics product.
4. Teledyne Dalsa makes some rather exaggerated claims of this sort for an older brother of this sensor, the FTF3020C, which it describes with "still widely used in professional digital studio photography" and "its remarkable image quality made it the de facto standard for digital still photography". Recognise that sensor? It is the 6MP 36x24mm sensor used in the one Contax digital SLR attempt, which doomed that camera through its poor IQ (noise in particular). And this new one has slightly worse per pixel DR, which the data sheet describes quite honestly as "a linear dynamic range of over 11 true bits" (69.5dB, with full DR of 71dB if one tolerates some nonlinearity at the high end.) Frankly, this is very far from competitive against alternatives like Sony CMOS sensors, which Leica has already deigned to use in a lower level product, the $2000 X1.