[eddie1960]

Wow, I got THAT one wrong.
Although those cameras - like you said - are not really "consumer" cameras.

the caplios have been more affordable, but these really have no comparable build camera competition for the most part. I have seen one that spent a year bouncing around inside a construction site. looked like hell worked perfectly

[alamo5000]

For my 2 cents... it would be monumentally stupid to not capitalize on the Pentax name. Back in the day it was the only game in town and hence it is still a nearly household level recognizeable name.

With some effort and investment in developing not just good, but great DSLR cameras...including a full frame...and having a much better line of lenses...I can see Pentax easily challenging Canon and Nikon and taking pretty good market share away from those two in the mid level to professional level market.

I will have to do some homework on the size and scope of Ricoh and see where they are listed and such, but if this is the direction they are taking I will buy stock in Ricoh...

[fast50]

I saw this one coming. It's throwing the Ricoh camera division a "bone". No one wants Ricoh cameras. The cachet is with Pentax. It makes more sense to "spin" it as "There will be no more Pentax compacts". Aside from the Optio WG/WRs, Optios don't really sell given cell phone cameras. If the next Optio WG becomes a Ricoh WG, it will be interesting to see how Ricoh manages the brand since Ricoh has zero "rugged" history in cameras.

My guess?

All GXR and Ricoh camera projects are dead.

I disagree. To the man in the street, Pentax and Ricoh are equally meaningless in a world of Canon, Nikon, Panasonic and Sony,. To the enthusiast, Pentax have made a mountain of mediocre compacts and a couple of decent rugged ones. On the other hand, Ricoh have a history of highly regarded premium compacts, all with very well received user interfaces.

Makes total sense IMO.

[cfraz]

]
- sales of the two brands amounted to around JPY 700bn in FY2011 and they plan to double them by 2013.

Really??? Doubling sales will require some ground-breaking, industry-changing products AND smart marketing AND an effective distribution chain. I haven't seen any evidence so far that Ricoh is making huge strides in any of those areas. I think their goal is on the optimistic side, to put it mildly.

Also, is that 700bn yen correct - about 8.5 bn US$? That seems a lot higher annual sales (I'm assuming Pentax is the biggest share) than justified by the roughly $100M purchase price for Pentax. But then, I'm not a businessman.

[RonHendriks1966]

A quick summary of the above text from Asahi Shimbun (native Japanese-speakers, please do not hesitate to correct this or add to it):

- no more compact cameras by Pentax; in the future, all compact cameras will be sold under the Ricoh brand name

- Pentax will specialize in interchangeable lens cameras

- they hope to bring Pentax fans back with high-performance cameras

- current typical clients are middle-aged men having chosen Pentax for image quality (he speaks about the 645D sensor, 4 times bigger than a common APS-C sensor, without explicitly quoting either but the article is illustrated with a 645D picture including a comment on its use by professional photographers)

- however, because of mergers and restructuring, sales have been sluggish

- Pentax + Ricoh hold a 6.5 per cent share of the digital cameras market in Japan and rank number 8 on this market

- they want to expand in Japan and abroad, in particular in the fast-growing Asian countries, with recently opened sales offices in China, India and also Russia

- sales of the two brands amounted to around JPY 700bn in FY2011 and they plan to double them by 2013.

Well this was global marketshares in 2010:



So the 6,5 % in Japan even looks good. I think Ricoh only had a few tends of percents marketshare.

Doubling in 2013 isn't impossible. Growing marketshare is one thing and increasing average revenue for each item is another way to grow. Sell less el cheapo P&S and a few more FF camera's.

[anthony mazzeri]

Ricoh has zero "rugged" history in cameras.

My guess?

All GXR and Ricoh camera projects are dead.

Quite the contrary, the only two product lines where the Pentax and Ricoh merger overlaps is the Optio/CX compacts and the WG/PX(previously G700) shock/waterproof models so both of these would have to be consolidated.

It seems from this article that it's the WG and Optio lines which will merge into the Ricoh CX and PX. And everything else will remain the same, Pentax = the three ILCs: Q, DSLR and MF. Ricoh = compacts and niche, including the GRD and GXR.

I'm assuming they'll combine the names as well as the tech, eg the Ricoh Optio CX7 and Ricoh WG3 and so on. Ricoh actually tried to build their own 'Caplio' name for compacts (eg Ricoh Caplio R7), copying the Optio name judging by the similarity.

[anthony mazzeri]

Really??? Doubling sales will require some ground-breaking, industry-changing products AND smart marketing AND an effective distribution chain. I haven't seen any evidence so far that Ricoh is making huge strides in any of those areas. I think their goal is on the optimistic side, to put it mildly.

Also, is that 700bn yen correct - about 8.5 bn US$? That seems a lot higher annual sales (I'm assuming Pentax is the biggest share) than justified by the roughly $100M purchase price for Pentax. But then, I'm not a businessman.

70 billion, not 700.

The article says:

Established sales offices in China, India, and Russia during the fiscal year, fiscal year 2013 2 brand sales aims at the 2 x 11 year total 70 billion yen.

That's where they're aiming to build, which is not where you are so why you can't see it. I assume they'll be able to achieve faster growth and brand-establishment as the 'pro' choice in China and even Russia than they ever could in the USA. For the same investment at any rate with having to fight the well-established Canon and Nikon for that 'pro' space in the USA.

[anthony mazzeri]

So who's going to do the ILC's? Is the K-01 going to Ricoh? Or is the GXR going to Pentax?

The GXR isn't an ILC, it's a range.

It's six different cameras (to date), with swappable back so you can swap the same controls, settings, SD card, files sequence, battery etc between them. Only one of these six GXR Camera Units has interchangeable lenses, which is MF-only rangefinder lenses.

[Fontan]

Subsequent discussions are very interesting, I say . . . .

[goldenarrow]

Well this was global marketshares in 2010:



So the 6,5 % in Japan even looks good. I think Ricoh only had a few tends of percents marketshare.

Doubling in 2013 isn't impossible. Growing marketshare is one thing and increasing average revenue for each item is another way to grow. Sell less el cheapo P&S and a few more FF camera's.

Lowly, commodity-king Casio beat out Pentax?!?! Pitiful. Doubling from the bottom should be easy. From 1.5% to 3%. Pentax is practically off the pie chart as it is. I hope this move by Ricoh management actually works and keeps Pentax from going out of business. Some life in the new products over the next three years is so essential. Feels like the competition at the top is accelerating away but maybe Ricoh can counterpunch better than Hoya could entrench themselves into a corner. (Can I have a Pentax digital watch with that new Pentax DSLR kit????)

[audiobomber]

There was a Ricoh announcement recently from someone high in management. I can't find it but I found the gist of it on PhotoRumors:

Ricoh will continue to exist as a camera brand and they promised “some very high-end Ricoh products” to be announced this year.

Here's one from PhotoRumors I hadn't heard before:

"Ricoh filed a patent 2012128045 for 14mm f/2.5 and 19mm f/2.5 lenses (28mm and 35mm equivalent). The interesting part is that the 19mm lens is designed for an APS-C camera (the 14mm lens is for a 4/3inch sensor). It is not clear from the patent if those lenses are designed for the GXR system or for a future GR model that will come with an APS-C [...]"

Go Ricoh!

Ricoh | Photo Rumors

[alamo5000]

A little bit of homework on the web---

2011 was the first time since the merger with Hoya that Pentax turned a profit. It was due to the Kx models and the K-5 models being a huge hit. So Hoya owned a company that lost money 4 out of the 5 years that it was owned. I am specifically referring to just the Pentax portion of of the Hoya corporation.

Hoya was losing money owning Pentax.

Ricoh is substantially larger than Hoya in terms of revenue. This is a good thing. It means under Ricoh Pentax will no longer be starved for cash. They can get bigger budgets and develop better products.

Pentax has proven it can be profitable, and did so in 2011... together the Kx and K-5 sales = Pentax turned a profit.

In 2011 Pentax SLR sales increased year over year by 30%. Their other cameras increased only 13%.

From the looks of it the Kx was a huge hit---as was the K-5---and hence the new K30 is trying to be a hybrid K-5 and Kx. Function with a lot of choice of colors and all that jive.... too bad I like my camera in one color (black).

To me the strategy is weak--but it was all Hoya could pull off because of a lack of cash to be able to dedicate to the brand. Basically from the looks of it Hoya got in over it's head in a business that needs cash to make cash...and they didn't have enough money to successfully develop products.

After reading through the annual reports of Hoya and Ricoh I don't see any reason whatsoever to be anything but optimistic about Pentax DSLRs. The DSLR market is where Pentax made its profit...I would venture to say that over the past 5 years Pentax was losing money in its point and shoot segment...

I would not be a bit surprised if Pentax point and shoots went away or were rebranded...but I also see Ricoh having a laser focus on the DSLR market, which is where the money maker is. I also see them as being substantially more able to dedicate much more money to development.

After reading up Pentax has been suffering from serious under funding and having too broad of a range, ie jack of all trades, master of none...but with that they stumbled upon the fact that a lot of Japanese consumers like all the colorful cameras...and that a lot of people also like performance (K-5)...

The tail was wagging the dog from the looks of it... but I believe with the larger ownership the dog will start wagging the tail.

Again, my reading made me even more optimistic about Pentax (DSLR) cameras...

The wild card here though is the 'hot thing' is mirrorless cameras...apparently mirrorless cameras with interchangeable lenses are the real winners... would not be surprised to see Pentax models of mirrorless cameras too...

(FYI-I have not done a full study of this... I only pieced together a little bit of information... at a glance and posted my initial reactions...)

[Alizarine]

Pentax Philippines 321

The cause for this number is because there are multiple Pentax pages for the Philippines... if it were only 1 unified page I guess the number would be around 4 digits too. It's weird that there's only ONE licensed distributor here but they have more than a handful of pages.

Well since the P&S market is already dying off pretty rapidly

Sad as it is, I agree. With phone cams as good as the Nokia N8's....compacts will have less space on the shelves. I wonder how Ricoh will plan this out though. Revive a dying product breed or milk the cow while there's cash in it?

[dadipentak]

It's Godwin's Law of PentaxForums.

[cfraz]

70 billion, not 700.

Thanks - that seems reasonable.