Originally posted by Winder Do people actually read posts? I said "SHIP THE ADAPTER WITH THE CAMERA". No, you would not have to buy a separate adapter.
And if you would jump ship over a $300.00 adapter then you must not have much invested in Pentax glass in the first place. The cost of jumping ship would exceed the cost of the adapter.
Keeping customers is important, but attracting new ones is MORE important given Pentax's small marker share. Most of these dedicated K-mount customers already have most of the lenses they need. They are not a significant source of new revenue. New customers have NO K-mount glass and don't care about K-mount compatibility.
If Pentax had the large user base of Canon or Nikon, then yes, supporting a legacy mount would be very important. With Pentax we are talking about less than 3% market share.
The K-mount will live on as the mount for the DSLR. It is not going anywhere. Pentax is not abandoning it. Mirror-less should move to a new mount and support K-mount with an adapter.
I was responding to the bolded part; there is lock-in, there is loyalty; and Pentax must take care not to make their current customers feel "betrayed". If they change the mount - even with a fully functional adapter, which should not be taken as granted - their current customers would not necessarily comply and buy into the new system.
If e.g. the adapter don't have a focus motor, then people could as well go to Sony/Olympus/Panasonic/Samsung.
Ship the adapter with the camera? That means, making everyone pay for it, even if they don't have one K-mount lens?
I'm not sure if this mirrorless K-mount is a good idea, certainly there are technical reasons for a new, shorter registration distance mount. But let's see the end result.
True, I don't have much. Just some Limiteds (21, 35, 70), a zoom (DA* 60-250) and few other primes. Because of this I would jump ship if they would try to force me to buy into a (mirrorless) system I don't want.
Market share when they weren't even trying is pretty much irrelevant; I'm sure the K-mount can do much better.