[pakinjapan]

Good social media requires full-time, talented people, marketing management, a consistent, unified brand message and a lot of repetition. Pentax has none of that here. I bet a USA marketing program would add $200 to each KP and $400 to each K-1.

There's a reason Pentax is price competitive - their cost competitive.

I was thinking more of ways to get the products into people face. Not massive marketing plans. Social media marketing if they do it the smart way, it can be done with very little money involved. That is what many startups doing now a day. They spend time and money to develop good products. They need to try more (or start hiring a marketing's intern) to get the word out.

[monochrome]

The standard is Fuji. They're not using a $15 an hour intern 10 hours a week.

[Jeff Lopez]

Are we following Ricoh Imaging Facebook page? Serpa uploaded a very nice picture there and Ricoh was asking what lens we would use for a landscape shot like his..

[Kunzite]

Any marketing effort is offset by the combined effort of well intended* people on the Internet
* trying to save us from Pentax

[johnmflores]

The standard is Fuji. They're not using a $15 an hour intern 10 hours a week.

They're doing a great job of increasing sales in a declining market and they've managed to do that without a single full-frame camera. Go figure.

For those that claimed that Pentax could not compete in the marketplace without a full-frame camera, Fuji is proving them wrong. The K-1 is a great camera and has brought new people to the K-mount, but I can't help but wonder if Ricoh should have used the K-1 resources developing a Fuji competitor instead of a D800/5D competitor.

My $.02, non-refundable

[Kunzite]

Fuji thrives on hype, and that's impossible for Pentax.
Pentaxians wouldn't listen to marketing telling them how APS-C is "good enough" and "nobody really needs FF"; Pentaxians would've continued to jump ship, in order to get their FF.

[Reed]

Fuji, in fact did one thing the Ricoh/Nikon/Canon will probably never do-they loosen their ties a bit. Adopted not so strict "made in japan" corporate visage, communication methods and simply act now as consumer friendly company. That pays off in terms of gaining new people into system.

[Rondec]

They're doing a great job of increasing sales in a declining market and they've managed to do that without a single full-frame camera. Go figure.

For those that claimed that Pentax could not compete in the marketplace without a full-frame camera, Fuji is proving them wrong. The K-1 is a great camera and has brought new people to the K-mount, but I can't help but wonder if Ricoh should have used the K-1 resources developing a Fuji competitor instead of a D800/5D competitor.

My $.02, non-refundable

Pentax just needs some hired guns making You Tube clips showing how K-1 images out perform the competition, etc. Or at least some kind of positive press. Zack Arias' clip Crop or Crap has had 650,000 views. That's about 650,000 views more than the clips produced by Pentax's top paid photographers.

Do most people need full frame? Probably not. But there certainly wouldn't be any harm in having some good photographers produce some short films about how they use Pentax's gear in real life. Start with someone like Mike Oria. It doesn't have to be about bad mouthing competition at all. Just about how they use features like astro tracer or composition adjust in real world situations and the results they get. Done properly, it could turn some budding landscape photographers into Pentaxians.

[Clinton]

The standard is Fuji. They're not using a $15 an hour intern 10 hours a week.

The standard is smart phones. They are capsizing the 80% of the market that just wants to take pictures of their kids and movies. The other 20% wants something better than can be delivered from a teeny sensor.

[johnmflores]

Pentax just needs some hired guns making You Tube clips showing how K-1 images out perform the competition, etc. Or at least some kind of positive press. Zack Arias' clip Crop or Crap has had 650,000 views. That's about 650,000 views more than the clips produced by Pentax's top paid photographers.

Do most people need full frame? Probably not. But there certainly wouldn't be any harm in having some good photographers produce some short films about how they use Pentax's gear in real life. Start with someone like Mike Oria. It doesn't have to be about bad mouthing competition at all. Just about how they use features like astro tracer or composition adjust in real world situations and the results they get. Done properly, it could turn some budding landscape photographers into Pentaxians.

Do we know how big the landscape photography market is? Is the market growing or shrinking, particularly among Millennials and other desirable target segments? Ultimately, does the growth potential in the landscape photography market warrant the effort or are the limited resources better allocated elsewhere?

[monochrome]

The standard is smart phones. They are capsizing the 80% of the market that just wants to take pictures of their kids and movies. The other 20% wants something better than can be delivered from a teeny sensor.

In the salad days Pentax had cash flow from SMC licenses to 'finance' everything. Fuji has CF from Instax. Sony has CF from sensors. Sony, Canon and Nikon have access to capital to buy shelf (that Fuji filled from Pentax) and infrastructure. Apple has both CF and capital in massive quantities ($261 billion in actual cash!).

Pentax seems to have little of either. They're really in a tough spot.

[Rondec]

Do we know how big the landscape photography market is? Is the market growing or shrinking, particularly among Millennials and other desirable target segments? Ultimately, does the growth potential in the landscape photography market warrant the effort or are the limited resources better allocated elsewhere?

It doesn't really matter. What you want to do is create a "want" for a product that isn't really needed. Why does someone need something more than their cell phone? These are the questions you need to answer.

To me, a cell phone is fine for snap shots, it is when you want low light, narrow depth of field, higher dynamic range, telephotos -- or a bunch of other situations -- where having a bigger sensor comes in handy. I happen to be most familiar with landscape, but you want to basically say "This is what I do with my Pentax camera that I couldn't do with my cell phone and you can do it too."

[Kunzite]

The presentations were published on Ricoh's site.
Ricoh Resurgent is making "solid progress", but there's still much to be done.
As for Ricoh Imaging...
"In other areas, sales rose on the strength of the industrial products business, which supplies stereo cameras and other offerings that harness our optical technology.
• We look to expand our Smart Vision business by leveraging our imaging technology, with our THETA 360-degree camera leading the way. Although the THETA performed well, Smart Vision sales declined owing to decreases in sales of other digital camera products.
• Operating profit dropped amid lower camera business sales and higher development investments in industrial products."
Financial Announcement | Global | Ricoh

[Pål Jensen]

If profit is dropping, but there still is a profit, And they are allocating resourses from consumer goods towards higher end stuff and industrial products, then everyhting is OK...

I've always said that the future of digital photography is in smaller formats. That doesn't mean that larger format are obsolete, just that there's hardly any reason to carry large cameras and lenses in order to achieve outstanding technical quality images anymore. Hence, fewer people will over time...

[camyum]

pentax has to....
ricoh has to...
if i divide one plus to and take away...



........................

I dont want to hook up there.
Instead i wanted to state that:

I would defenitely buy a D500 equivalent from Pentax at the same price tag.

Until that time all my needs are fullfilled with the PENTAX K-S2 that I financed by selling off my K-3.
:P
If you want 1300-1500Dollars,Euros, Pounds, whatevers from me... you better offer a decent upgrade to the former flagship.

And if you want to sell me a fullframe-camera demand you price and build it with competitive features.
I tell you guys reading that, i would jump ship immediately if I wouldnt have a vast amount of expensive glass at home for a semi-pro.

Since price effort in Pentaxland is gone, (That happened when the hype that the PENTAX system received from building the K-5 series, which was able to compete with Canon 7D at that time, made the System attractive again)... and the hype slowly dies away, I really can not suggest photography beginners to invest in the pentax brand, looking at the technical features the cams offer.

For instance, I would suggest it, and buy new kit, if the AF performance improves drastically.

And as a reminder to all the fanatics that think they are "involved" because they sell cams or get paid for their photos a few times a year, i want you to know that:
K.I.S.S.
As a normal human being you neither could nor should interpret anything into those numbers.
You will never know about the profit such a company makes... and at least it is a profitable company. (Keep in mind that there are values at the stock market that rise so high and are not even half profitable as RICOH)
It is a fact that even people who are deeply involved, sometimes do not have a clue about such things.

The only thing i do know from business lessons is:
Every darn product you can buy on the market goes thru

production cost + (at least) 100% to the bulk buyer, who adds up himself >
(at least) 100% to the importeur, who adds up himself >
(at least) 100% to the retailer, who maybe still does/formerly used to >
add up 100% to the customer

What do the usual suspects learn from this? Right ! nothing !
But a normal person should be able to read out, that RICOH Imaging is not salvation army, production cost is very much below what one would guess and they better dont worry about numbers that are written for people that juggle with millions and billions of dollars.

I am pretty sure we will see a worthy successor to the K-3II with improved AF and other features, that mostly all Pentaxians are waiting for, even if the usual suspects deny, they want those features, everytime someone here on PF demands such improvements from Ricoh-Imaging.
I also heard these nay-sayers doing prognoses that pentaxians will never see a FF not so long ago.

And alas, all the Pentaxians with a bit o brain know the K-1 is not the FF we waited for,
but at least it IS here and PENTAX indeed is back to getting interesting... for the professionals.
At least one can read that out of most magazines that are doing reviews about the K-1.
(Even if they list all the drawbacks, those reviews always confirm the K-1's outstanding Image Quality)

I wish you much fun on sophisticating on further into the doomed future of the pentax system.