Originally posted by Pål Jensen How may FF cameras can Pentax sell?
Obviously, if it replaces APS-C, then as many as there are APS-C cameras sold now!
This is not about Pentax.
It's about Canon and Nikon, with Sony an outlier playing Minolta's old role.
In the titanic struggle between Canon and Nikon, these 2 brands slug it out using pure industrial muscle with a big chunk of earnings forwarded to marketing. All that matters here is that one of them will blink and realize there is more fortune to be made at the other guy's expense by putting this capital into lowering the FF sensor cost through volume, putting those sensors in at lower price points and stealing customers with the classic "my x is bigger than my competitor's x".
It did not work with Hummer but it will work here because the cost/benefit ratio decisively favour FF for just a minimal margin increase (about $100 per unit). For the industrial and design side, moving back to a single line of bodies and lenses will create a clear advantage for the long-term balance sheet.
When this happens, all DSLR brands have to go FF because their APS-C will be at a striking market disadvantage. It may persist in very low-end and mirrorless cameras for awhile, but APS-C, too, will go away as FF becomes commodified.
This would have happened already save for 5 things:
1) Sony is inept. It's not just cameras, but all over. The challenger is not challenging.
2) The Yen has been on a tear and the carry trade is dead, leaving Japanese companies capital shy (zombie banks don't help either). The pace of industrial turnover in Japan is tepid.
3) Ninon's had to put enormous capital into its own sensor development which is where it has lagged Canon and Sony.
4) Deflation is in evidence, meaning that prices cannot rise to meet the investment costs of making FF a commodity. It will take brute pricing, efficiency, and market share power to get costs down while retaining profits.
5) Digital took over from film at the higher end faster than anticipated. This is a reactionary (Falk called it superfluid) industry right now. There may not be collusion, but there are many reasons not to show cards.
Photokina 2010 will be very, very interesting. I am in the camp that if I do not see a Pentax roadmap, I will likely have to forego Pentax for Nikon. But as I said, this is really about what Canon or Nikon will do. 5:1 odds it is Canon that makes the big move.