Originally Posted by noblepa 
Has Pentax EVER really competed head-to-head with Nikon and Canon, for the top-end market? When I bought my Spotmatic new in 1967, it seemed to me then, that Pentax made cameras and lenses that could produce images every bit as good as C & N, but they were still not competing.
When I compared the Spotmatic to the Nikon F, I decided that the F was made for a professional photographer, probably a photojournalist, who needed a camera that could shoot 20 or 30 rolls of film every day; that could be worn around the neck with three other cameras as the photog jumped out of a Huey helicopter in Vietnam; needed removable back, viewfinders, MLU. But mostly a camera that could be literally thrown and banged around and still work.
Keep in mind that the German manufacturers (Leica and Contax) dominated the 35mm film camera market before and immediately following WWII. (In the U.S., Kodak controlled the consumer film camera market with inexpensive cameras, film and processing.) Nikon and Canon were successful in entering the 35mm rangefinder camera market in the early '50s, and their products were popular with photo-journalists during the Korean War. AFAIK, Asahi never made 35mm rangefinder cameras or lenses. So it would be natural for Nikon to go after the photo-journalist market with their 35mm SLR system after their success with rangefinder lenses and camera for this market.
In the early days of the 35mm SLR cameras, the competitors remained the German brands, especially Carl Zeiss-Contax and its Eastern European decendants (Pentacon, Praktica, etc.) and of course the Exakta. Asahi used the 42mm x 1mm screw mount from German Praktica (East German Zeiss) cameras in their Spotmatic SLRs, and I think this shows who they viewed as the competition. But yes, the Spotmatic series was intended more for the serious amateur than the pros, and it would be a step up from the cheaper Kodak snapshot cameras in the U.S. and similar simple cameras in Europe and Asia.
Nikon dominated the pro 35mm SLR market with the F series in the '60s and Asahi was one of the biggest sellers in the advanced amateur market in the mid to late '60s with the Spotmatic series. Canon was in the SLR market from the early '50s with the Canonflex, and had all sorts of SLRs including the original F-1 pro level camera using the FD mount thereafter. AFAIK, Canon didn't have a really big hit SLR until they introduced the first "fully automatic" cameras (AE-1 and similar models) in the mid '70s. It was only recently with the EOS series that Canon became a dominant force in the professional photo-journalism market. And Olympus was very successful with the OM line of of compact, high performance cameras and lenses starting in the early '70s, but they were left behind with the compete lack of an auto-focus interchangable lens SLR until the 4/3 System was introduced.
I think the only time that Asahi/Pentax attempted to challenge Nikon in the 35mm film camera pro market was with the LX camera introduced in 1980. That camera had pro quality construction, a very complete line of accessories (finders, backs, motor drives, flashes, etc.) and the combined M and A lines of lenses offered a very complete selection of lenses including ultra-wides (15mm), fisheyes, super-telephotos, and even ultra-long mirror lenses. The LX holds its own against the competing Nikon F3, and is clearly superior in areas such as metering in low light and with TTL flash. But the LX never really made inroads into the pro market. And Pentax was slow to respond to the success of the new Minolta auto-focus system in the early '80s and even slower to enter the digital market.
The other "professional" camera market where Pentax has successfully competed is in medium format roll film SLRs, where the 645 and 6x7 cameras did quite well. But again, Pentax is slow to enter the medium format digital SLR market. However, it remains to be seen how this market will survive under pressure from smaller format, high-end cameras like the 21 MP Canon 1 DS Mk. III.