Marc,
Well, we certainly haven't seen any Zeiss film scanners, but the truth is - we don't know what they have or don't have in their labs and what are they doing for NASA and Hollywood for ex&le. So, it's entirely possible that they have certain know-how in the area, but not on that consumer-level pricepoints. With Leica though I think it's much less likely. They're too small to take on that and considering that they're now all split up into different companies under different ownership it's not going to happen I think.
Sony scanner with Zeiss optics may be a good option. But considering that I personally think most of Sony electronics is junk I'm not sure I'd want to buy it
Sony did in fact have a good film scanner in the past that some labs are lucky to have (dr5.com is one of them). That wasn't a $1500 scanner though and when it comes to current market I'm sure that purpose-built scanner would be better than that Sony one.
Seiko-Epson could make a good flatbed scanner with some kind of film adapter, but it would be too bulky in my opinion. For 35mm film it's an overkill.
As far as direction of market is concerned I think people are too obsessed with latest junk to hit the market. It's like a never-ending "lose weight" fad. You want to lose weight? Hit the gym and use that barbell. Everything else is just a way to get your money.
So, in that regard I'm personally happy that Zeiss is making more lenses than ever and that there is a new film camera out there (Ikon) that I own and so on. I think they're doing the right thing. Film is great and I don't see it going away for next few decades, but nowadays for a variety of reasons you may occasionally need to scan the film to produce digital image for say sharing online or printing via LaserJet or Chromira or anything else of this sort. BUT, I don't need that image to be "archival". Most of the time it's a one-time thing, since film has more detail on it anyway and it's a lot easier to archive than dealing with digital files.
Thus it would be nice if Zeiss would make a really good scanner that would be able to get as much detail off the film as possible, but I don't expect it to be able to get all that detail and I don't expect it to last more than 5 years. That's where things differ from say Zeiss ZM lens. Any Zeiss ZM lens I buy I expect to last well over a decade. Any piece of electronic mumbo-jumbo I buy isn't going to last that long and I accept that.
So, 35mm Zeiss scanner than can make really good scans at say 3000dpi with less noise than any other scanner on the market (regardles of claimed resolution) and higher real Dmax (as opposed to "marketing Dmax") would be a great tool to have for next 5 years until something better comes out.
Most pictures taken with 35mm don't get enlarged beyond 8x10. Very few are made to 11x14 and then usually paying for professional scan is not an issue. With typical 305dpi digital output that would mean you need a 2440x3050 pixel image to fill the 8x10 paper. So, a roughly 2600dpi scanning resolution is all you need to do that. The key though is correct color Dmax and absolutely minimum noise.
If such product did exist I think it would be in fairly high demand.