financial analysts in Japan have an interesting take on this. they believe that for all intents and purposes, only Sony and Canon will be real players in the digital camera market in 2 years. everyone else will be marginalized with Nikon losing the most since they started at number 2 at the beginning of the digital camera dash. they never considered Pentax to be in the running at all as a mass market digital camera vendor. Pentax has recently revised its 2004 forecast from 1.6 million to 1.4 million digital cameras sold worldwide. what is interesting is that Japanese analysts think that Pentax can remain an important niche player in the DSLR and digital medium format camera market. so far as the analysts are concerned, it's only a matter of time before film cameras become irrelevant to the bottom line of the major Japanese camera vendors.
Herb... ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Desjardins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 9:12 AM Subject: Re: is the MZ-S the "FA ltd" camera? > I think that Pentax's limited R&D budget will be spent on DSLRs and any > film camera that can be derived from them. I suspect that you simply > shift the nature of your manufacturing from primarily mechanical > products to primarily electronic ones. Leica has decided to stick with > mechanical but this is a very limited market and its not obvious that > Pentax could justify it financially, especially when they are going to > be cutting it close trying to compete with DSLRs. I guess Pentax could > subcontract out a mechanical design, but it would be a collector kind of > affair and VERY expensive.
