It sounds like Pentax is more worried about getting stuck with unsold cameras than selling cameras. However, to be fair, I have found out recently that the IRS now taxes stock in the warehouse, which they did not use to do (which is why publishers now remainder books so quickly), so that may be the reason they do not want to keep large stocks of merchandise on hand.
Let me speculate on that 95% digital figure he quotes. 90% of all disposables are still film. 99% of P&S's are now digital. What percent of serious cameras does that mean is now digital or film. I do not think anyone is giving us honest answers to that. Though I would guess most serious film cameras being sold new now are replacements for worn out equipment with very few going to new buyers.
But then the new serious camera market was dying long before digital cameras came out. There were literally millions of great cameras made in the 70's, then the fad died out. So there were all those great used cameras that worked perfectly available, and only those who felt they needed the latest gee-whiz features, or needed the life expectancy of new cameras, were buying new.
For the younger folks here, in the 70's, if you knew 3 people, 2 of them seemed to have high end SLR's hanging around their necks. That applied to motorcycles, stereos, RV's and other expensive toys as well. It was simply the most affluent of times in recent history. With the recession in the early 80's that all pretty much disappeared along with most of the lower middle class economic group in the US.
-- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com/graywolf.html
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Film camera sales are drying up, seriously slowing down. We still have all our line-up of 35mm SLR cameras in production, but film camera production levels are way down and production schedules less frequent. That means that instead of having thousands of each of the 35mm cameras in stock in the US, we might have hundreds, or in the case of the MZ-S, *ist 35mm SLR and ZX-60 this past week, we're temporarily out of stock. More have been ordered from Japan, of course and we have expected quantities and arrival dates. During the last few months off and on, we've been out of the MZ-S, ZX-60, *ist (35mm camera) and ZX-L cameras, in some cases, for weeks at a time. I receive a weekly availability report. It's simply a matter of much lower production numbers, to address the deteriorating sales of these cameras. Our goal is to continue to manufacture 35mm film cameras for as long as there's a large enough market for them to justify continued manufacture. That's pretty plain, for as long as it's practical to make them, we'll make them. When the market is determined to be just too tiny, we'll stop making them. That's how it's always worked, in this industry and in others. With continued reduction in the level of sales of any product, there comes the potential of stopping its production. (I do not anticipate that all of a sudden that there will be a revitalization of 35mm film camera sales in the future). I remember when the LX was drying up. It got so bad that near the end we were selling fewer than one camera a month and then fewer than one per quarter (in the whole US). If the demand isn't there, continuing to produce it is a bad business decision.
With 95% of anticipated new camera sales this year in the US expected to be digital, rather than film, it makes sense that production schedules of 35mm cameras will continue to be cut back, as their sales continue to slow down.
