I'm not sure that there was that much brand equity left in KM by the time Sony bought it. Minolta was limping along after the Honeywell AF lawsuit and had only barely got its legs back under itself when the merger happened and blew that away. Konica had been trying to get out of the camera business for 20+ years at that point and the KM digitals were very well engineered but also very well ignored by their corporate parent. By the time Sony bought the KM camera division, Sony was a much bigger player in the camera market than KM.
Mind you, I'm something of a Minolta fan, their later cameras like the Maxxum 9 and Maxxum 7 were superb and their lenses were excellent. -Adam On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 10:56 PM, Anthony Farr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Sony threw away billions of yens worth of brand value when they swallowed > Konica-Minolta and let corporate ego erase a valuable heritage. IMO, KM > itself also degraded the brand by fusing their names. They should have used > the old separate names in different sectors of the market, or even just > offered clones in the different brands like Samsung & Pentax, or Panasonic & > Leica. > > BTW, what is the standing between Pentax and Samsung now that Hoya makes > Pentax's decisions? IOW, does Hoya enjoy a good relationship with Samsung? > > Regards, > Anthony Farr > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> Sent: Wednesday, 2 July 2008 7:04 AM >> To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List >> Subject: Re: OT: Nikon D700 hands-on >> >> I don't think Sony will ever be more than a tier two player in the photo > world. Brand >> is important in every marketing arena, and they don't have the brand. In > truth, >> Pentax has more brand equity. Samsung, by the way, has none. >> Paul > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. > -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
