Originally posted by pres589 Pentax introduced the DA 40 XS with the K-01 which is a clear alternative to the DA 40 Limited. I don't think you could really suggest that the K-01 was made to be used with the Ltd's unless you want to ignore the 40 XS entirely. I think the K-01 was another chance that Pentax took to be a little different and to try and get a different camera body out without doing 100% of the effort required to get there (a lot of borrowed K-30 bits to make a MILC).
It would be interesting to see the logic behind creating the K-01 from internal documentation that are clear of marketing speak entirely; who they thought would buy the camera, why they would consider the K-01 over other alternatives, etc.
The 40 XS is an interesting one. I don't think it says anything about which lenses Pentax originally intended to be used with the camera because it was not Pentax's idea in the first place.
In one of the presentations I attended last year for the 100 Years of Pentax celebration, a member or the Ricoh/Pentax design team (goes by the name TKO) spoke about the design process and working with Marc Newson. He seems to have been the contact point on the Pentax side. From what he said, the lens was not part of the original design brief given to the designer. Apparently, Marc Newson had always wanted to do a camera and got really into the project. He ended up proposing the 40 XS lens, custom strap and the package and designing them at no extra charge.
I wrote about this presentation in another thread.
Pentax 100 - Talk by the designer TKO - PentaxForums.com
It seems Newson also designed additional color variations. If you look at this video from about 3:30, you can see that he designed the blue variant that came out later in Japan, but there is also one with a pink grip that was never released.
Going back to the presentation, the other thing TKO recounted quite amusingly (which I didn't mention in the linked summary) was the meeting where he first presented the prototype to management. The design team placed it on the meeting table and it was just met by a long, awkward silence.
This is just my opinion, but I think they specifically wanted to appeal to people outside the normal camera enthusiasts with the K-01. Around that time there you could see quite a lot of DSLR users holding their cameras out in front of them and using live view. There's some logic to thinking that they might prefer a camera without a viewfinder at all. In fact mirrorless cameras with no OVF or EVF do sell well in Japan and other parts of Asia. In any case, they hedged their bets by making the K-30 as well, so people who wanted a viewfinder were not left out.
I also think the release timing is significant. It was just after the merger and you know whit it is like after a merger. People tend to get rather worried and risk-averse after mergers. I can't help but feel Pentax had bigger plans for the K-01, but ended up releasing it rather apologetically. In that year Pentax had a big TV ad campaign in Japan with a well known actor, which could have reached way beyond normal camera enthusiasts to the broader audience that the K-01 targeted. That advertisement was for the K-30, but I wonder whether at some stage that was going to be for the K-01. It's all speculation, but I think they lost their bottle when they started handing prototypes around to executives and traditional photographers started reacting negatively.