Herb wrote: > Pentax hasn't demonstrated that it knows one of the simplest business rules, > make sure you know who your loved ones are (core market) protect that > market. Pentax ought to be making a camera that sells to Pentax enthusiasts > who have been buying lots of those lenses that we all like to talk about > here. they make a lot of money from each one of us because we buy > accessories and lenses where we care about quality and are willing to pay a > little more. introducing cheap bodies that appeal to first time buyers of > SLRs is well and good, but when that alienates the current users, that's > bad.
Apart from the fact their core market and Pentax enthusiast aren't necessarily the same, I agree. What I can't understand, however, is why this criticism comes now in 2005 (I whined about the same thing 10 years ago. Now I'm optimistic now that Pentax claims to make SLR's their main focus - If I have waited 20 years I can certainly wait two more). Pentax dumped their core market 15-20 years ago (depending on how you count). When you bought your *istD you already knew that Pentax had their main focus on P&S and more or less dropped developing the K-mount slr line during the 90's (or made or built them P&S like). A whole decade was basically entry level P&S slr's from Pentax. Nowadays at least they claim that they would make slr's their main business which should give reasons for rejoice and not gloom. Huh...if digital P&S would have continued being profitable and a market in growth Pentax may not even have bothered with the *istD. Your arguments doesn't hold water either; your financial "analysis" really precludes the camera you actually ask for. If the market and financial situation is as bad as you imply, (I don't think it is - I think Pentax have a better starting point for conquering market share than both Olympus and KM - whether they realise this potential depends on the products they will release of course), then it would surely be suicidal to release a camera body significantly above the *istD in price. After all, a higher end SLR typically sell 1/10 or less the quantity of entry level models; and this is for manufacturers that actually have significant presence in the higher end (Pentax doesn't - it is more than 20years since Pentax was a force to be reckoned with at all). If Pentax sold 66K last year - it means 6K DSLR in upper level; surely not sustainable. What Pentax have been saying, is basically that they practically speaking don't have a user base for higher end DSLR until sufficientl! y many users have bought an entry level DSLR from Pentax. This means that they think that Pentax enthusiast with many lenses without an *istD that will jump directly to a semi-pro Pentax DSLR (like me) are too few to be reckoned with. If one in ten ugrade from an *istD to a higher end DSLR, and I don't think this number is unrealistic, then it takes quite a lot of camera sales until it is viable. My "educated" guesstimate is that 1/10th of *istD owners will upgrade (I'm not talking about an updated *istD but a camera in a class above), 10.000 perhaps will come from Pentax enthusiast without a Pentax DSLR but lots of lenses; 10.000 from other brands or previous non-Pentax owners (I think I'm being generous here). Still, there needs to be a lot of *istD(S/L) to be sold in order to create a customer base. Pentax wants to create stepping stone upgrade path but timing will be dependent on how many entry or volume level DSLR's they sell. Pål
