Originally posted by Winder The Black K-01 is at #100 and #4,804 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
The Yellow K-01 is at #99 and #4,742 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
The White is no long ranked in the top 100, but Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,184 in Camera & Photo.
Olympus is occupying #2, #3, #5, & #6.
The all black body with kit lens is t #2
The silver/black body with kit lens is at #5
The Black body only is #3
The silver/black body only is at #6
Fuji has crashed all the way down to #11. BUT..... that is because Amazon is no longer taking pre-orders. They have sold more than the expect to receive on the first shipment.
For comparison the Pentax K-5 body which has been on the market for over a year and costs considerably more is checking in at:
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #355 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
We will see some shifting after reviews are out people get to see how product really perform, but I don't think we are going to see a huge shift. Fuji is probably limited by the fact they wont be making enough XP1s to meet demand. Like the X100 it will be back ordered most of the year.
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How many new users will Pentax gain from this, and how many existing users will migrate to Fuji, Olympus, or even Sony? Will it be a net gain or a net loss? Fuji is generating 3x the gross revenue from every XP-1 as Pentax is from the K-01. When you attract higher end users with more money, you make more money.
Do a Google Trend analysis of the three brands in question and you'll see that Pentax lags far behind the other two in brand conversations. Let's use this as a proxy for Brand Awareness. Even before the launch of these three cameras, Fuji and Olympus had much great Brand Awareness than Pentax, and the Amazon numbers may be reflecting that. As others have suggested, pre-ordering a camera is something that only the very camera-knowledgable even consider doing. So if Nikon launches a D3100s tomorrow with just small tweaks, Amazon pre-orders will likely be low but Nikon would probably sell more D3100s in 1 one month than what the others combined sell in a year once the Nikon sales and marketing machine gets wound up.
Unbeknownst to us, Pentax has a goal of how many K-01s they want to sell. How many they need to sell to break even, how many will be considered a modest success, and how many will be considered a hit. Those numbers are based on a number of things - the performance of past models, the depth of the distribution and sales channels, and post launch marketing and advertising.
The Amazon numbers, while interesting, are just one data point among many and are by no means definitive or a predictor of future success.