Originally posted by Philoslothical Seems kinda a bassackwards way of doing things, but what do I know.
Not from the retailers viewpoint. I spent 30 years in retail and the worst nightmare is to have a manufacturer announce a nice new shiny product while you have a lot of the nice OLD shiny product still on the shelves.
If a new camera is in the works this is the proper way to do it. Announce some rebates and other incentives and give the retailers a heads-up that the model will be discontinued to give them time to clear the inventory. Makes the retailers a lot more eager (and financially able) to bring in new things if they are not stuck with the old. Note that only B&H has hinted that the k-r is discontinued. As of this morning Adorama and Amazon both list it as "in stock" and there has not been any official announcement from Pentax. My guess is the retailers got advanced warning but were not necessarily supposed to tell the world until their inventory was clear. We do not know how many units are still in the pipeline but this is the right time of year to clear all that out.
Sounds like great marketing to me.