Ricoh's plan: Raise prices and then they compete against Pentax owners cashing out of their own used Pentax lenses.
We all made money with this price spike.
We all benefit by the high price increases when we sell our Pentax lenses to fund our buying into another camera brand. Staying with the Ricoh brand will truly cost us all more. Added price, no added value today.
Ricoh killed off K Mount once before. Would it be impossible for them to travel down the same path again ?
I still think Ricoh bought Pentax for the Q and 645D and Patents. The K Mount System was simply bundled into the purchase, just like it was when Hoya bought out all of Pentax Corporation in 2008.
Atleast Hoya spent some cash on the K Mount before selling off the brand to Ricoh.
Originally posted by monochrome My theory on the prices: Pentax intend to replace most of these lenses over coming quarters (say 12 quarters or three years). At these price points the replacement lenses will have better waranties, batter AF motors - whatever faults we think the current lenses have. In so doing they could raise the wholesale prices (narrow the marging) and justify the retail price - so they're establihing their "Price Bands" now and will correct the "Value Bands" going forward.
Of course, many of you will argue they should have kept the prices as they were and raised prices when introducing new, improved lenses. Perhaps - but IMHO that would just extended the "angst" period for years instead of weeks.
Just a thought. And Ricoh does have a plan.