Originally posted by Aristophanes The Q has almost no presence on Flickr and as a system camera it is dead last in mirror less sales on Japan. The large chain camera store I frequent only has online stock as there is no walk-in requests.
Companies release money-losing duds all the time. Windows 8.
Not everything wins the market the same way. Something goes off the shelves right away, but for something heavy discounts are needed.
Market is saturated in many areas, and few areas are left intact — say the large sensor compact. Thats' why I can't still get the X100s, or the new GR. Initial demand is quite high.
However in saturated parts of the market, Nikon also started to win more attention once the V1/J1 became cheap. They grew stronger when the V2/J2 was announced, because they could get rid of J1s at a bargain price. Q was following the same recipe, and will perhaps repeat it with the Q7/Q10 bodies too. It seems the whole mirrorless market, apart from large sensor compacts, drags along like that. With the new Pen announced, people already started to buy previous Olympus Pens and are waiting for a new to drop in price.
The next step for Q? With Q7 coming, Q10 will start selling dirt cheap, same as the original Q did when the Q10 arrived.
WHY Q HAS MORE ECONOMIC SENSE THAN ANY OTHER MIRRORLESS CONCEPT?
That's the caveat with digital photography and market oversaturation —
people are buying products at the end of their life-cycle, when prices must drop. A camera company that wants to stay in business and have market presence, unfortunately, must have (at least) one such product because it keeps the company on the radar. For Pentax Ricoh, that is Q.
However, Pentax Ricoh most likely have least expensive (to make) offer in that market segment, and just one egg laid there, which doesn't cost them as nearly as what costs others (say Olympus) to sell products at the end of the life cycle. So from that perspective,
Pentax Ricoh may not be first in mirrorless sales, but are first in losing way less money than others in a futile market segment. As in everything, it all depends on how you see the game and how you read those numbers.
Thus for Pentax Ricoh, it's much safer not to sell too much in that market segment, because they will inevitably lose way too much money too.