Originally posted by ghelary Well nobody knows how many stained sensor there were around. Dissatisfied customers tend to be very louder than satisfied ones with the Internet. Even though the K5 is a successful camera, I doubt that Pentax is selling hundred of throusands a month. Actually given Pentax market share, selling 100 000 DLRs a year would be resonable evaluation So speaking of a batch, 1000 faulty cameras can be an estimate of the total impact of this. Total cost: about 1 million dollars(not counting damage to image)
Can be 100 000, can be 10 millions since I had some difficulties in checking my facts, but tens of millions is not really realistic.
My 2 cents.
Mistral75 makes a good estimate.
Another way to estimate it is by looking at the serial numbers. Between the first batch of K-5s and the confirmed cleaned batch I believe there are aproximately 150,000 cameras. Now assuming that the K-7
and K-x ended production not long after the K-5 and K-r were introduced, those serial numbers consist pretty much entirely of K-rs and K-5s (the 645D making up a negligible amount). How many of those 150,000 are K-rs and K-5s? No way to know for sure, but 30-40,000 seems like a reasonable assumption.
Now let's say that half of all the affected cameras get sent in: 20,000 cameras. Remember that not only are customers individually sending their cameras in, but some retailers are also sending their entire stock back.
Shipping costs: I know for a fact that round trip shipping for my camera as paid by Pentax was $40. Shipping back to the manufacturing center for repair, assuming bulk shipping, maybe $10 per unit? $50 per unit = $1 million.
Repair costs: Disassembly, filter replacement, reassembly. $100 seems like a conservative estimate = $2 million.
Cleaning, repackaging, accessory replacement (battery, cables, etc.): $50? = $1 million
$4 million in direct servicing costs. The rest are harder to get a clear estimate because of market forces:
Loss of market value: It will likely be several months before refurbished cameras are ready to be sent back to market. In that time the market value of the camera will drop. How much? Maybe $100-200 = $2 to 4 million.
Diverted manufacturing: hard to quantify, but replacement of 20,000 cameras from the initial batch with new manufactured cameras means 20,000 cameras that cannot be sold at this moment. 20,000 * $1500 = $30 million in sales that will likely not be able to be accounted for in this quarter. This of course does not mean the money is lost (the cameras will be sold later once refurbished), but it will hurt their quarterly earnings and potentially investor confidence (stock market) for unquantifiable amounts = $???
Bad publicity/loss of reputation: $???
So direct losses are in the area of $6-8 million (servicing costs plus market value loss). Unquantifiable damage from reputation and quarterly earning reports.
Now that Pentax has made public statements about the K-5 stains, the public and retailers are now well aware of the problem, and may definitely see a rise in returns. It can easily break the $10 million mark in direct costs.
Again, Hoya itself can easily absorb the loss with no problems, but it doesn't look good on the record of Pentax, what with Hoya's management being very insistent that its Pentax division prove itself worthy of its $1 billion+ purchase price and be able to support itself without eating into the parent company's profits.
Last edited by Cannikin; 02-08-2011 at 10:45 PM.