A humble opinion, probably incorrect but possible (and an industry expert such as Falk will correct me if wrong):
I wonder whether many here appreciate the way lenses are made now (and in some cases might always have been). The days of a room full of Japanese men in short-sleeved white shirts sitting on a stool before a table full of parts boxes day after day after day assembling the same camera body or lens -
*Nagano, Japan - Mark Hama builds Mat 124G's at the Yashica factory.
those days are long gone. Today (and probably for 50 years for some items) a camera company plans to build a certain number of items, trains its assemblers, allocates space and time in a clean warehouse plant in Vietnam or Thailand, builds the "run" quite quickly, and warehouses the stock until it is exhausted.
A product that has a constant buy stream such as the FA50/1.4 or the FA Limiteds or many DA lenses might have more production runs scheduled - but they are runs, not (usually) a constant daily trickle of assembled product to meet daily demand. Pentax's rumored production run of 500 units a month (if in fact correct) would then be to build a planned stock of the lens for its total life.
Once the stock is built production will cease and the assemblers will be trained to make something else. John Carlson's statement about the K-01, when asked if it has been discontinued, that "the production run is complete," is a wonderful euphemism but is indicative of this manufacturing strategy. The Fire Sale pricing of the K-01 indicates Pentax determined it would not likely empty the inventory in any reasonable amount of time, so they cleared it - small money now beats no money later.
We can't know what annual sales pace Pentax built into their pricing and manufacturing model, nor the cost of capital they built into the model, but it could turn out that they will be happy to sell a few copies a year for ten years from this intial production run. It seems inexplicable to us but to them it might make sense. If the DA560 sells at the pace Pentax projected (whatever that pace is) the price will stay fairly firm. If it doesn't sell well or if new competition changes the selling pace, expect either a gradual or more robust "Clearance": pricing of the lens.
Of course, that could be years down the road.
Last edited by monochrome; 02-28-2013 at 08:01 AM.