Originally posted by dcshooter To be fair, that time frame does also cover the Ricoh acquisition, the consolidation of the two departments, and the establishment of the new photo strategy.
But it would seem ridiculous that Ricoh wanted to buy Pentax without any photo strategy in the first place, right? Before the purchase, during the purchase, etc. that strategy was forming already. It's not like: "Oh we got the damned thing — now lets figure out what we're gonna do with it ...".
But specifically, it is us who know nothing about that strategy. To be frank,
we are only giving Pentax Ricoh endless excuses — excuses we devise ourselves — to cover up our own insecurity and interest in this matter. This summer will mark 2 years since Pentax Ricoh merger / acquisition, and still we haven't seen anything that shows their collective brain at work.
It is us who want to be insanely surprised and therefore believe that buying us extra time will deliver some insanely great products, which will "magically help Pentax make a quantum leap over all its competitors". And make us immensely proud for being so faithful.
Quote: Designing and building a new FF from the ground up takes time, especially for a smaller camera maker
No it doesn't. It took Nikon less than a year to come up with the D3. Nikon was desperate then and knew it was their best shot. They were building it up on top of Nikon technologies available for decades and had only squeezed in an FF sensor. If Pentax wanted to release an FF camera by now in that similar fashion,
they could!
But instead, in that same year when Nikon decided to go after the FF using their best selling mount and all its faithful userbase, some peanut brain at Hoya / Pentax decided to go after the 645D, using the obscure Pentax mount compared to its hugely popular K-mount. Result? Instead of inspiring its large userbase, they've split them even further.
Nikon was fully aware what users were craving for — the FF commitment. FF is the legacy since film age, millions of lenses were already there. But what Hoya/Pentax does? They release 645D, to satisfy cravings of the 0.1% of its userbase. It was the stupidest move in camera history, that only helped Pentax bleed its customers to Nikon and Canon.
Quote: By the end of this year is when we should really start seeing Ricoh's stamp on the company, particularly at the higher end.
As said above, this speculation isn't based on any facts, but on our belief that "it takes time to cook up some good magic and reward our faith". But would a good company act in such a way, and forget that it's maybe better to retain its customers and upgrading its market image by releasing incrementally better products based on current technologies?
Same as Nikon did, same what Canon does all the time, and which awards them with constant customer loyalty and stabile market presence. But that's why Nikon is Nikon, right?
Last edited by Uluru; 01-27-2013 at 02:56 PM.