[biz-engineer]

It means Ricoh would sell D810-level hardware at D610/D750 prices, which would hurt their margins a lot

Yes but you make the assumption that a D810 hardware cost more than a D750 hardware. The definition of price: price is what customers are willing to pay. Cost and price are different. Also, the overall margin for a business is the average between low margin products and high margin products, otherwise, every company would only sell high margin products, but since every company has fix costs, even low margin products contribute to pay the bills (so the best profitability is achieve with balancing a mix of product lines with different volume/margin contributions). There is also what we call "marginal cost" i.e the cost of producing one more unit, which defines the lowest price short/medium price you can do while still contributing to capture market share and pay fix costs. Anyway, if a customer is not willing to buy a $4K FF body but has the money to pay for a $2K body, and Ricoh offer only the expensive version, then, this customer won't spend his money in Pentax mount and may spend it in Nikon mount, which mean that Ricoh won't sell him Pentax lenses etc... So, business strategy should not only be driven by the financial figure of one product, otherwise nobody would invest in unknown future, there would be no startups, no venture capital, and no innovation. One of the reason why Pentax lost market share is because they failed to secure k-mount invested customers: once you sell a k-mount body, even at a loss, you acquire a new customer who is worth his life time value (LTV) = the amount of money that he will spend in lenses, and upgrades in new camera bodies etc.... Hoya goal was to get rid of Pentax, so they focused on short term financial figures, and the results was that Pentax lost a lot of long term business.

By announcing their full frame a year in advance, Ricoh stimulated the primary demand (primary demand = demand for a type of product regardless the brand) for a full frame camera. For instance; some Pentaxians purchased a D750 a few months after Ricoh announced the Pentax full frame. Now that those prospective full frame customers who did not yet left Pentax, feel the need to purchase a full frame camera, but also have to buy full frame lenses, they may also consider Nikon offering (if they have to buy a body and lenses, it is not more expensive to switch to Nikon than it is to stay with Pentax). So, if Ricoh only offer a single overpriced FF body, a number of the prospects will leave to Nikon. But if Ricoh offers two pricing between APS and 645Z, a good retention of the remaining customer base can be achieved.

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Last edited by biz-engineer; 08-16-2015 at 11:40 AM.

[Kunzite]

Kettle logic.
The D810 hardware indeed is more expensive to produce than the D750 hardware - just by reading the specs list we can identify things like the chassis (plastic parts on the D750), the shutter (capable of 1/8000 and faster sync for the D810), USB 3...
If you also include the D610, which you did previously, there are more such differences (e.g. the AF system)

Mentioning the concept of marginal cost is meaningless in your argumentation, as is the suggestion that I might confuse cost and price. Which is not nice.

And last but not least, the $4K/2K "example" is completely made up, to the point it can't be considered an argument either. Once, it's an oversimplification thus defective: there must be a point where making and selling a cheaper camera (against a competition in a much better position to do so) won't work. And second, because while your figures appears to be reasonable guesses, we don't actually know where's that point, for Pentax.

[monochrome]

Straw men. There isn't enough volume at Pentax to make such a strategy work.

[JimmyDranox]

Two FF with two different body? I don't think so. Maybe two cameras, with the same body but different sensors and specifications, and a big difference in prices, make sense.

[Kunzite]

No, we know for months there will be one camera.

And as monochrome pointed out, eating into your margins by selling more expensive hardware cheaper can be compensated by volume, which is precisely what Pentax lacks. Low volumes, many newly developed components, small user base, not so great brand recognition with the general public, small lens range - all those, and a company which is not known for flooding the market with lots of cameras just to see which one sticks.

[biz-engineer]

No, we know for months there will be one camera. And as monochrome pointed out, eating into your margins by selling more expensive hardware cheaper can be compensated by volume, which is precisely what Pentax lacks. Low volumes, many newly developed components, small user base, not so great brand recognition with the general public, small lens range - all those, and a company which is not known for flooding the market with lots of cameras just to see which one sticks.

But if Ricoh releases two full frames models with the same body, what are you going to do ?

[monochrome]

No, we know for months there will be one camera.

And as monochrome pointed out, eating into your margins by selling more expensive hardware cheaper can be compensated by volume, which is precisely what Pentax lacks. Low volumes, many newly developed components, small user base, not so great brand recognition with the general public, small lens range - all those, and a company which is not known for flooding the market with lots of cameras just to see which one sticks.

I said nothing of the sort. I said Pentax DOES NOT WANT TO DO THE THINGS NECESSARY TO SELL AT HIGH VOLUME.

How many times do I need to write this?:

The CaNikon, High-volume, Low-margin business model is not Ricoh's Pentax business model. They do not compete with Canon and Nikon on price / volume. They don't want to invest the capital and hire the workers to make that many cameras. They don't want to deal with WalMart. After a point they're not interested in gaining market share - certainly not at the expense of profit.

Ricoh wants to make a solid profit on high-quality, well-spec'ed, cameras that don't have marketing expenses priced in (so they can offer more features at a given price point than CaNikon). They want to design and manufacture a combination of expensive high-end lenses and very competent mid-range lenses for sophisticated consumers, enthusiasts and, apparently now, professionals. They're willing to experiment with one-off new designs and formats (K-01, K-S1) to gather market information for future directions.

But they're not building emasculated cameras with tiny feature distinctions to differentiate the Walmart offering from the BestBuy offering from the Target offering. They tried that with the K-500 and it didn't work.

They will certainly not FW disable hardware or software features to downrate their Flagship camera body for sale at a lower price in a consumer channel.

It simply isn't going to happen. End. Of. Discussion.

[Rondec]

If you read the rumor, it was not for two cameras in the same body with unlocked features in one and a 42 megapixel sensor and the other with locked features and a 24 megapixel sensor. The rumor said that the 24 megapixel sensor would live in a K3 body, while the higher megapixel sensor would be in a new body.

Now, that is foolishness to me. You can't just stick a full frame sensor in a K3 body. It would need a complete redesign. It isn't as simple as just popping out the APS-C sensor and popping in a full frame one and voila, you have a full frame camera.

[noelpolar]

I just want a silver one......to match the lenses that are on their way home from their holiday makeover at Dcshooters place.

[JPT]

If you read the rumor, it was not for two cameras in the same body with unlocked features in one and a 42 megapixel sensor and the other with locked features and a 24 megapixel sensor. The rumor said that the 24 megapixel sensor would live in a K3 body, while the higher megapixel sensor would be in a new body.

Now, that is foolishness to me. You can't just stick a full frame sensor in a K3 body. It would need a complete redesign. It isn't as simple as just popping out the APS-C sensor and popping in a full frame one and voila, you have a full frame camera.

I don't think the FF could literally have the same body as the K-3. But what struck me when I saw the FF mockup at CP+ was how close it was in overall size and ergonomics to the K-3. People were holding their K-3s against the glass to judge how big it was and it was only really the prism that makes it any bigger.

The other mysterious thing for me was that they showed it with the FA31 attached, not their latest and greatest DFA giants. That made me think that this isn't really the model that they are meant for. That's when I started thinking that there would probably be two models, with the other one being bigger.

Let's face it, there isn't one single magic spec and price point that would keep everyone satisfied. The competitors offer products at multiple price points, and if Ricoh doesn't, their system will look very limited in comparison. Also, the logic of having to make a whole line of lenses but only having one body to capitalise on it looks suspect to me.

Actually, making camera bodies is the easy part for Ricoh, comparatively. Making several new cameras a year is business as usual for camera companies. Ricoh currently make DSLRs bigger and smaller, and they redesign things like SR, AF, metering, the prism and the mirror mechanism every couple of generations anyway. Two FF cameras in quick succession is totally feasible.

[thibs]

If you read the rumor, it was not for two cameras in the same body with unlocked features in one and a 42 megapixel sensor and the other with locked features and a 24 megapixel sensor. The rumor said that the 24 megapixel sensor would live in a K3 body, while the higher megapixel sensor would be in a new body.

Now, that is foolishness to me. You can't just stick a full frame sensor in a K3 body. It would need a complete redesign. It isn't as simple as just popping out the APS-C sensor and popping in a full frame one and voila, you have a full frame camera.

Of course it would need slight body update but FF in k3 body here imo means the same as D300 body talking about the D700 which really are the same body but mirror box and prism.

[Fontan]

This is 2015 and we are still at it. This is depressing.

[Kunzite]

But if Ricoh releases two full frames models with the same body, what are you going to do ?

Try to find my way back from the Alternate Universe I somehow got stuck in

monochrome, my apologies for unintentionally misrepresenting your point; it should've been "as monochrome pointed out, Pentax is not a volume seller..." and only then my own argumentation about volume being needed if you're going to eat into your margins. Again, my apologies.

[Zygonyx]

This is 2015 and we are still at it. This is depressing.

Depression will be allowed and covered by public welfare systems, if nothing new happens by the end of 2015 re. "l'Arlesienne"

[thibs]

Depression will be allowed and covered by public welfare systems, if nothing new happens by the end of 2015 re. "l'Arlesienne"

But they dunno public wellfare systems in (e.g.) north America...

So depression still an issue