Philips is almost certainly having some *major* problems with the production of the 6 megapixel CCD.
Since I'm the Components Engineer responsible for semiconductors (mostly discretes but including all optoelectronic devices) at my company I've been doing some investigating. I've been going back and forth with their North American distributors for over a week and they still won't cough up pricing *or* availability information. The latest voice mail I got from the local rep tried to steer me toward looking for alternative devices. It seems that no one at, or associated with, Philips even wants to *talk* about this device. Considering that they've just lost one significant customer for this part with the cancellation of the Pentax 6MP digital SLR, unavailibility of this part is more than suspicious, IMO, and indicates they're having major problems of some kind. Perhaps yield issues, perhaps the soft semiconductor market has forced them to cut back in general and this part was one that got the axe. Who knows. Don't know if this the same CCD that was to be used in the Contax digital SLR. The Philips press release only mentioned Pentax (http://www.semiconductors.philips.com/publications/content/file_735.html) I'll post more information when/if I get it but I think I'm getting about as much as I'm going to find out without a personal spy inside Philips! We'll see. -- Mark Roberts www.robertstech.com - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
