Originally posted by RonHendriks1966 Jointly the market shrinks 10 % in revenue in yen this year for all Japanese company's. So the question is, what will bring next year? If the market keeps shrinking despite all those new expensive offers.....Well someone is going to feel the pain.
As for Pentax. I think they invest to much in expensive gear, while their customer base isn't used to spend that much. Instead of the expensive dfa*50 they would have better made a series of fullframe f2.0 lenses that are affordable, but yet very good (28mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm).
As I said before, I think the peak in camera sales is over. Just because the offers are so mature, that everyone with the funds and willing to research can fulfil almost all of his photographic needs with the latest generation of cameras and equipment. The countless new offers don't bring anything significant to the core principles of photography - the quality of the resulting image.
10 new mirrorless or whatever cameras don't change this and show only that the market is not driven by innovation towards higher quality but by multiple attempts of somehow keeping the revenue for manifacturers and for this the user has to be seen as a consumer. This consumer should not be happy with his equipment, even if he might have bought it just two years ago. Despite the fact that there will be no or minimal gain in image quality the consumer should have the feeling that ha should not stop buying new equipment.
Other industries, like software industry, try to keep this constant revenue by not selling software products, but having monthly subscriptions. It seems to work out for them, even if consumers have the feeling someone is ripping them off.
I am also curious what will happen with all this contenders, putting their money on similar horses. Will they be able to get the ROI they expected?
Maybe Ricoh is really in a better position here, smaller investments, slow but constant flow by allowing people to save enough money for the next purchase to complete their system with equipment that really gives better IQ, like the DFA* 50...
Okay, the last sentence was with some irony... hehe