Originally posted by reh321 If I worked for Pentax, frankly I might have trouble convincing myself to convince management to move forward on any K-02 project, with so many of the K-01 still unsold out there. As a customer, I point to the lack of an EVF, but I'm not sure I could sell that to Pentax (nor to their Ricoh superiors).
I agree with some of the things LensBeginner says. I too have notice there are a lot of K-01's on ebay, and yet they ask a fairly high price. When I looked at mirrorless, I was not far off in price of a Fujifilm X-a1, and I went with that, but only because the X-A1 has really awesome high ISO, and the lenses have tested extremely sharp - much more value for money, for a camera without an evf. If I could have bought a K-01 for $100-$150, then I would have pounced on that.
I remember when stores were running out the K-01 body for $300, and I think they're really worth under $150AUD maximum $200.
If Pentax engineers look at the K-01, they know it was a flop. Look at the Canon EOS-M which flopped even worse. A friend of mine picked up an EOS-M body 6 months ago when they were being run out of stores for $200. He didn't even get a flash or lens, just the EF adapter.
I found that an Australian electronics retailer was running out the EOS-M with twin lens kit for under $300:
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/106177
Here's the history of all the offers on the EOS-M:
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/product/canon-eos-m
In that link I see even the EOS-M 3 has started to crop up with offers because it too is an orphan which nobody wants.
Similarly to the K-01, we see the EOS-M on ebay ..... GALORE !
canon eos-m | eBay
If we were to take what happened with the K-01 and the EOS-M, I would fairly say that the EOS-M was the greater of the flunkies ........ Both have been orphans. So what went wrong with the EOS-M ? I'd say that the lack of evf, and making people pay for an evf was one of the clinchers, the other is no inbuilt flash, and its the kind of camera you just know you're gonna drop because there's hardly anything to hold onto, so you want a wrist strap for this camera.
So if a Pentax engineer looks at the K-01 and EOS-M series, they could learn how not to do mirrorless. You need: Inbuilt flash; Inbuilt EFV; a decent grip and grippy material. The EOS-M has a few lenses in its own mount plus I think third party lenses if memory serves me right. But you've got to offer some features that nobody else does, like weather proofing, or great high ISO, and even better lenses in their own mount.
I don't think that Pentax should give up, Canon certainly didn't despite 3 series of overpriced flunky cameras.
A K-02 would have to emulate what Fuji or Sony does. Pentax and Canon botched it.