On Feb 28, 2006, at 6:54 PM, Rob Studdert wrote:
You are not feeling especially smart, either.
I recall that Pentax was pretty blunt about the FF camera not being
marketable due to sensor issues.
So you are telling me that they didn't know this or it wasn't an
issue when it
was shown to the market?
Actually, they didn't. I saw the prototype at photokina and talked
to some of the Pentax people about it. They were very enthusiastic.
But at that time they did not know that Philips, the maker of the
full frame chip, would miss delivery deadlines by over a year and
jack the price up several times prior to delivery. Kyocera went
ahead with the N Digital using that chip, and you see where it got
them! Pentax people I talked to at various times during the project
were very up front with me about what was going on, and when Philips
raised the price one last time they told me they were killing the
project because the new chip price would push the price of the camera
out of the range they considered practical. The Contax N Digital was
nearly two years late to dealers, sold poorly and performed even more
poorly due to chip and firmware problems, both of which Kyocera
blamed on Philips. I believe it was the disaster with this chip that
caused Philips to decide to withdraw from that market and sell off
their chip fabrication assets, which are now an independent company
called Dalsa.
If I were in your shoes, Rob, I'd direct my anger where it belongs,
at Philips. They promised Pentax something they were unable to
provide at the quoted original price and in the quoted time frame.
Pentax lost a lot of money on that project. If Philips had come
through with what they originally promised it would have been a
killer camera. But if they hadn't dropped the project it might just
have killed Pentax, as it did Contax.
Bob
