You really think that Pentax is just going to suddenly die??? End of the K-Mount?? very very unlikely.
I don't consider it "very very unlikely." Pentax has been losing share in a growing market- that's not a sign of brand strength, and I actually think that once we've gotten to saturation, someone is going to be forced out of the market. That could change if the Yen weakens significantly, but right now the US is 30% of the DSLR market and coming out of the recession jobless, Europe isn't firing on all cylinders and they're another 30% of the market. I don't think we'll keep one of the Pentax or Olympus companies doing DSLRs- maybe they'll both drop out. I think it's more likely that Hoya will drop Pentax before Oly will give up- though it's still possible that Panasonic will force Oly out more quickly than they'd like. In either case, I give Pentax less than a 50% of survival. When the CEO of a public company says "I don't think we can float this by ourselves" it's a very worrisome thing, "We're going to expand our efforts into blah, blah, blah" would be the business as usual spin, that statement is bad- and unless they're close to a deal, it's really bad- even then it's not a good negotiating position even if it's the truth.
I had a Contax/Yashica mount film camera way back when, I feel your pain.
For one, Samsung is really only flirting with the DSLR market (i am sure you pay attention enough to know that the K10D was kind of a joint effort between the two) and while Samsung may eventually buy Pentax, they are mostly only doing DSLR's because of Sony; which bought Minolta and they reason they are in the business anyway.
If Samsung do not buy them soon, then it may not matter. They went with a proprietary mount for the NX and if that does well, they may not see an advantage to Pentax (Having a Korean company swallow a Japanese one isn't going to go well no matter what.) Sony killed off a lot of stuff over the last four years, Samsung haven't, so I've actually got some optimism that Samsung will do well- but it's going to come at someone's expense if they do- although short-term, I think if the NX does well, that and Panasonic will have more of a negative effect on Oly than anyone- but those customers won't be buying Pentax either.
My other thought is that it may be that Samsung are the ones who decided not to purchase Pentax's camera division when the Hoya merger happened. Because it sure looked like someone was near an agreement initially.
Both the K-X and the K-7 have gotten rave reviews and are widely considered to be equal to or better than there competitors. While Pentax has recently had loses, the K-X and the K-7 show Hoya does have a strong commitment to putting pentax into profitability. That goal is currently set at March of this year and will likely be accomplished.
I don't think it shows a strong commitment, especially given the statements when they purchased Pentax and more recently. They've done what they need to so that there's still enough value to sell- there has been no long-term commitment to Pentax since the sale.
Home Betamax was vastly superior to VHS- it doesn't matter if you don't gain sales. Nothing I've seen shows Pentax doing anything new marketing-wise, distribution-wise, or in any way that'll increase sales- and that's the name of the game.
What Hoya will do with the camera business after this is unknown. However whoever owns Pentax doesn't really matter. It has shown that they can turn out professional quality product. They have a very strong line up of very quality glass and would look appealing to anyone wanting to get into the camera business.
Who owns Pentax matters a *lot*. In case you haven't noticed, dedicated camera and processing stores are failing. That means to get in front of customers, you must have a good box store distribution channel and be able to incentivise the distributors to get your product onto limited shelf space- Samsnug can do that, JVC, not as well...
Leica's not doing well, and their brand is much stronger- the general purpose brands have been knocking out the specialty brands left and right. If you want a parallel, look at high-performance computing- Cray, SGI, Hitachi, IBM... Not many HPC players amongst those who survived and all of those government subsidized.
It's not a good time to be a niche player in the DSLR market. Nikon's Ashton Kucher advertisements did very well, and Nikon's low-end strategy did very well- I think they're mistaken to not reinforce that low-end stuff at this juncture, but they want the hobbyist and pro markets. I think they need them too, but I think only Canon gains from them not pursuing the entry-level market full on.
Pentax is going to have to take on Sony, and at this point, Sony is just a much safer bet.
Pentax was way too slow out the gate with digital, and I don't think they can compete well in the Costco/BestBuy world. They may have gained some home market share this year, but I'd be very surprised to see it translate to global share. Nikon was slow out the gate with full frame, but when they came out, they came out strong- Pentax came out ok, but not strong- this is a little late in the game, they've missed most of the market's growth and the years of very high margins.
Pentax is also planing to launch into the medium format business this year with the 645D. Which is what they are really treating as their full frame. But really full frame has really been nothing but a world of hurt for anyone.
I'd consider that a bad thing- I'm not sure Hasselblad will weather the next few years, with the D3x arguably beating a couple of low-end PhaseI backs, Pentax would probably be better served by putting those resources into a marketing effort. On the contrary, MF has been declining, but the margins on the 5D, D3 and D700s have been great, one of the reasons that MF is in decline is that you can get a high-end Canon or Nikon body that'll rival MF for nowhere near the price- close enough for most commercial usage. It'll be interesting to see if we get sales numbers for the Sony's FF cameras though.
and the Pentax K-X is at #12. Looks pretty good to me. lol.
