Originally posted by falconeye Aristophanes, I see what you try to say and you certainly have a point. But IMHO, you push it over the edge.
E.g., your 1 billion $ fab investment by Sony (and IIRC, this wasn't by year) for 50,000 extra wafers/month translate into $1670 per wafer. That's a small figure compared to the cost per wafer which I already assumed anyway. It's more an argument that sensors are cheaper than we think.
And then your attitude to treat sensors as a rare good almost nobody except a few can buy. That's ridiculous. It isn't the way the market works. A CMOS imaging sensor is a product. It isn't contract work. It has a part number and a price per thousand. There may be a few extra deals like the ones between Apple and Intel for early access to new processors. The 36MP sensor seems to have such a deal too. But sensors are a readily available product, in any size.
The reasons Pentax or Olympus aren't entering the market (yet) is IMHO their fear to compete in the $2000+ markets.
While I can understand that fear, my worry is that it will be too late for Pentax to cope with FF when it drops well below the $2000 limit.
And you say FF got more expensive. This isn't how it is perceived by those going to buy one. In the past, FF was either crippled or unaffordable. You had a choice of bad AF (5D), bad resolution (D700) or insane price (the D3 or 1D variants). Now, both 5DmkIII and D800 have changed that and represent a massive price drop from the (now unprotected except for frame rate) 1D or D4. It will push the D700 below $2000 (as soon as production can cope with the demand again) and the entire APSC market in turn. The important test case will be the D400.
1. The # of CMOS sensor manufacturers has dropped as quality has increased for the photo applications. Shopping around is happening less and less because Sony has set the bar too high. Is anyone but Samsung using Samsung sensors? Even Canon uses Sony sensors in their P&S line.
2. Pentax may be very limited in trying to fund al alternative supplier to Sony with both IQ outcomes and price. And trying to do so while funding all the other aspects of creating a new FF system from scratch. To pay that off, this will not be a "value brand" camera system, the hallmark of Pentax's position in the marketplace where the K-5 is less costly than the D7000.
3. It's all about price. The market for cameras over $2,500/unit shrinks substantially and cannibalizes your own brand's APS-C sales, so there is little net gain. They'll just sell fewer K-5's and K-01's, and suffer through lousy margins as APS-C commodity prices give you substantial breathing room that FF won't for half a decade. That's why FF model turnover is less than half that of APS-C.
4. As Sony demonstrated, FF doesn't make people jump from Canon or Nikon. The modest price differences in no way make of for the other tangibles like lenses and flash systems.
5. So Pentax pretty much has to fund FF from its existing consumer base plus very modest natural growth in the installed base. And it has to do so while paying more for a Sony sensor that appears to be in very short supply because at that quality, there's not enough production capacity and yes, Sony and Nikon appear to have a deal. I suspect quite strongly that this deal precludes a purchaser other than Nikon or Sony camera. Neither wants to commoditize FF supply.
6. So if you (Pentax) want more production capacity, you'll need to convince Sony to ante up through a long-term pre-purchase agreement. Sony probably does not want to undercut their 100% purchase supplier in Nikon. If, as you say, there are other suppliers, then Sony will work to keep the one purchaser of 100% of their current FF product. Look at Sony's overall bottom line; Sony needs Nikon far more than Nikon needs Sony. Sony bleeds red ink. They will do what it takes in the medium term to keep Nikon happy, even if that means stalling Sony Imaging's own FF DSLR line for awhile. It is patently obvious that Sony Head Office made that cold, cold calculation when killing the A850 and more recently, stopped production on the A900.
7. The biggest problem with this discussion is that people dramatically overestimate the # of people willing to spend over $2,500 just for a new camera body. it is much smaller than most people here think. The total market worldwide may be less than 10 million souls, of whom 20% are corporate buyers. Add in competing against Canon and Nikon and this becomes a very large hurdle. People would still leave Pentax for Nikon FF for reasons other than the sensor. Pentax has 5% of APS-C right now and a $2,500 body will reduce, not increase unit sales. That is what high priced items do...they shrink the consumer base.
And for the record, ages ago I predicted the D700 would stay in production at a much lower price creating a real problem for a new entrant.