Re Samsung possibly exiting the mirrorless camera business: remember that Samsung are used to entering and exiting the ILC market.
1. In 1995 Samsung bought Rollei from Heinrich Mandermann, then owner of a variety of photo companies including Schneider Kreuznach, Beroflex, Praktica and Exakta, hence the links between Samsung and Schneider Kreuznach. They divested Rollei in 1999.
2. In 1997 Samsung launched a manual focus film SLR, the Samsung GX-1 Kenox, known as Samsung SR-4000 outside Korea.
The Samsung GX-Kenox 1 / SR-4000 had a specific mount. Three lenses were proposed:
- 50mm f/1.4
- 28-70mm f/3.5-4.5
- 70-210mm f/4.5-5.6.
These lenses were labelled Samsung in Korea and Schneider Kreuznach for export markets; for instance, the 50mm was a Xenon.
The Kenox GX-1 has had some success in Korea while the SR-4000 sales were poor and the camera ended its business career in discount stores in the United States.
3. During their partnership with Pentax, which began sometimes before January 2006 (announcement of Samsung GX-1S) and ended sometimes between May 2009 (announcement of K-7 with a Samsung sensor) and September 2010 (announcement of K-5 with a Sony sensor), Samsung:
- Cloned the Pentax *ist-DS2, *ist-DL2, K10D and K20D as Samsung GX-1S, GX-1L, GX-10 and GX-20
- Rebadged some Pentax lenses with the Schneider Kreuznach brand name and some names belonging to Schneider (Xenon, Xenogon and so on)
- And provided the Pentax K20D's and K-7's sensors.
4. Samsung announced the NX10 in January 2010 and are said to gradually exit the mirrorless market some six years after.
"
History repeats itself." (Thucydides)