Originally posted by P虱 Jensen I don't think thats the case. Pentax was No.3 in DSLR marketshare in 2011....
Originally posted by Aristophanes Sony and Olympus also lost market share.
Canikon was always tough to compete with. Minolta failed and Olympus has its current crisis.
Nonetheless, Pentax always was rather successful due to a good pace of innovation and a focus on enthusiast photographers. They lost a fair part of their market because of their erratic approach to digital. But with the K10D, they had started to gain lost ground again. At the height of success of the K10D, Pentax market share was about 6% and Pentax was #3 indeed, with close followers being Olympus and Minolta/Sony (about 5%).
Remember that the Pentax aquisition was an unfriendly take over which shows how strong others believed Pentax to be. Not the kind of bargain sale which Ricoh profited from to aquire Pentax.
My current Pentax market share estimate is 3%, some sources see it lower, some higher. But to say that it was halfed during Hoya supervision is fair IMHO. In retrospect, Hoya paid a fortune for their lousy job which actually makes me smile a bit. (*)
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(*) About $ 1billion lost (assuming Pentax cameras was ~1/2 the value) which is (optimistically assuming 400,000 SLRs/y sold over 3 1/2 years) is $700 lost per camera sold! In other words, Hoya had to "return" ALL sales revenue from SLR sale ... It would have been a real return if the original shareholders of Pentax would have aquired rather than Ricoh.
Sony's market share during this time has doubled or tripled, according to various sources. Only if you exclude their SLT or NEX series as being non SLR there is a way to see lost market shares ... But if you consider the overall system camera market then Sony now is a solid #3 with about 1/2 the size of Canon or Nikon. A share Pentax under a different management could hold.
However, I seriously doubt Ricoh is entrepreneur enough to run risks as high as Sony management did and still does. But as we can see, it is required to gain market share: you have to accept higher risks than the market leaders or otherwise, their bigger economy of scale will make you fail sooner or later. Hoya avoided risk at all price and fortunately, their shareholders who let it happen paid a high prize for this.
Originally posted by ogl Fake and even if it were true, no way such a camera could even rival the K-5.