Originally posted by Ivan Glisin On a corporate level certainly no.
But I was not trying to compare corporations. What I was trying to say was simply this: Pentax is taking certain steps IBM took as well (reducing product portfolio and eliminating unnecessary resources and assets) and it does not necessarily mean that the end of the company is imminent. That was the parallel.
What actually reminded me of IBM was market positioning of 645D compared to OS/2 Warp: in my opinion both are/were matter of corporate pride and having or not having 645D (or IBM OS/2 Warp back then) really would not matter too much in terms of total market share. Killing K10D would have been a disaster, but killing 645D would not do any real harm to Pentax IMO.
Unfortunately IBM had to sell some of its crown jewels in the process and nearly gave up on the large processor market just before it staged a recovery (I remember the panic when they had to hire back several thousand engineers on contract who they had just let go in Kingston and Poughkeepsie). To me the 645D looks more like the Mainframe than OS/2 warp in the sense that it was their flagship low volume high margin product with a long history and they simply lost their nerve when in fact there was still a potential market.
I was personally involved in the development of Warp which was actually a far superior product technically, woefully let down by lack of marketing and third party support - complete lack of management vision and typical IBM arrogance. It was the last chance the world had to avert the dominance and stagnation of the "microsoft years" and it failed because no-one primed the market. Had it succeeded it would have been on every desktop and laptop in the world - hardly a 645D which will never sell in numbers.
I will give you this though - I have wondered about Pentax's management strategy over the last few years with the DS and DL also-rans and no *istD upgrade, not to mention an abortive movie/camera hybrid and some lacklustre compacts not to mention an almost total lack of marketing, non-existant distribution etc. etc. Smacks of stagnation and indecision by the management team under Urano and does remind me of IBM in the later days of Akers management. No wonder Urano wanted to bail.
The K10D proves they have the goods, and the 645D would give them much needed credibility in a market where the average store assistant has never heard of them. Marketing and distribution need sorting out too - but there is a market to go for out there all they need to do is grab it. I dont know the economics of it - I just suspect the 645D is diverting resources away from potentially more profitable lines, but it may also help to boost the whole brand image. So I dont know. If its close to production they may be better off just going for it...