Do more boutique camera companies like Leica just survive on their (what I assume to be) large margins?
At the risk of angering Leica fans: they’re shipping not exactly state of the art technology at very high prices, with a lot of the R&D actually being done by Panasonic. (Or, in the case of their Lux compact cameras, they’re literally shipping Panasonic cameras with a different sticker on them.)
Look at the Leica Q2: it costs $5000. The Fuji X100V costs $1300. I know there’s a bigger sensor in the Q2, but, c’mon, there’s not $2000 worth of magic hiding in there.
I think that misses the point: when you buy Leica, you're not buying technology. It's not a technology company, it's a luxury brand. You buy Leica over Canon, Fuji or Panasonic for the same reason you buy Rolex over Casio, Swatch or Seiko.
Having used an M camera briefly, they aren't worth the price new, but used they are really great values that are built like nothing else. When you tire of them, you can sell them back for what you paid, sometimes more!
By contrast, Leica's digital M bodies have always been at least a generation behind... at their time of release. The way you deal with this is correct exposure discipline, such that there's less to deal with in post. Newer M bodies have gotten much better, however.
The Q is a really interesting line, since I assume it's a collaborative project between Panasonic, Tower Jazz, and Leica. Frankly, the images for both the Q and Q2 are outstanding, and I'd throw down another $5k for a 50mm Q2. If you seriously think an X100V can compete with a Q2 for full pipeline imaging (capture to print), you're nuts. I've personally seen large prints come out of my Epson P800 from an XE-3 + 23/1.4 and my Q2 and the noise reduction artifacts inherent to the X-trans filter are noticeable on paper. If all you're doing is posting to IG or Flickr, Fuji is amazing for the money.
The M9 was revolutionary in 2009, an 18MP full-frame sensor in a peer-comparatively tiny body. The M Monochrom in 2012 is the only major first-party camera to release w/o a Bayer filter with massive increases in resolution and sensitivity. They've been riding the "classic rangefinder experience" for some time since with incremental improvements, but the early digital M bodies were anything but behind. The recent M10-R and M10-M are also competitive sensor-wise.