Originally posted by Cerebum I am quite sceptical about the future for Pentax. At best we will be a very small niche product and hopefully that will be enough to keep the brand going. Milc announcements always include a range of technological advancements and OVFs are only going to get better. The practicalities of mirrorless the better af and the fact that Pentax advantages (ibis, wr) are making their way into cheaper milc bodies makes mirrorless far easier to promote. Pentax ergonomics and build quality are superb but introducing this relies on the camera world in which Pentax is largely overlooked. I do think the "niche" is big enough, exclusive enough (apsc) and important enough to warrant putting all our eggs in one basket. I also feel the milc market is so saturated with excellent, technologically advanced cameras that Pentax would damage its reputation further by the perception they are constantly lagging behind the companies with massive R&D budgets. I just wish Pentax would cascade improvements down from the K3 iii to the earlier models in the way that Fuji did with the XT4/XT3 by way of a firmware upgrade. I genuinely believe Pentax will live on, I just don't think there are any metioric rises on the horizon
So on the one hand, you are sceptical about the future of Pentax, but on the other hand you genuinely think Pentax will live on.
Which is it?
There will likely never be any meteoric rises for anyone in the camera industry going forwards. It's now a very mature industry with products made for the last 5 years (likely more) able to satisfy the needs of the vast majority of users.
The camera market bubble has been propped up by companies dribbling out technology improvements since the dawn of the SLR, if not longer. The problem now is that they are running out of useful technology improvements to dribble out, and they have competition from other image making devices (hello cell phones).
The market is contracting, and the large players in it have much to lose, much more than a small player like Pentax.