Originally posted by Winder I think Ricoh over estimated a few things. We know from interviews that it took a lot longer to integrate Pentax and Ricoh than they expected. They are probably close to 2 years behind schedule. If Ricoh just wanted to be a niche camera company then they never would have bought Pentax. They could have kept evolving the GR system and stayed a niche company. Ricoh wants to be mainstream and compete directly with Canon, Nikon, & Sony. Ricoh has a lot riding on the FF body, so I'm willing to bet that it will be an awesome camera.
I'm just worried they will follow Sony and miss the market. When Sony rolled out the A900 it was really an awesome camera at the time, but Sony missed the boat on the HD video/DSLR revolution and the Canon 5DII stole the show. The Canon 5DII wasn't a better camera for still photography, but it has this new video feature and the industry went crazy about it.
This is something I really agree with. If you are a company that is happy to remain a niche player, you don't need to go through the expense and pain of an acquisition to maintain a token presence in the market. That's why I was so pleased that Ricoh bought Pentax. It meant they had to be serious about Pentax, or otherwise what was the point?
What I disagree with is the notion that Ricoh is years behind schedule because the full frame camera didn't come as soon as some people expected. It isn't like Ricoh did nothing in that time. They turned the Q round to be a relative success. They released the K-3, which improved almost every system in the camera. That's no small feat, since people on this forum were saying that the K-5 didn't leave any room for improvement. They released the GR, which was a great leap over its predecessor and won the battle of publicity over its Nikon rival. Then the 645z came and seems to be a great success.
It seems to me that Ricoh's stance has been to strengthen their excellent existing but underperforming product lines before they embark on a major new line of products. And I'd be willing to bet that their full frame offer is better thought out than the Sony A900 was.