Originally posted by RobA_Oz It strikes me that there are three main possibilities, arising from this: There is no significance to it; The APSC flagship is being discounted to allow the 35FF to come in at a lower price than its competitors; or A replacement for the K-3ii is to be announced soon, possibly at the same time as the 35FF. 2 and 3 aren't mutually exclusive, of course.
For a normally running business (not a case of bankruptcy), dropping prices (and margins) to capture more sales in the short term is not the way to go because it is harder to increase prices of the same product, except if a new product is planned, a new price can be set , justified by new features/specs, and margin recovered.
So, K-3 price drop means three things:
- stimulating sales to maintain a certain revenue and pay the bills
- based on production capacity usage and marginal cost (drop prices if the prod. line is not loaded)
- secure the FF business case by incentives to get people invested in k-mount in one way or another. DFA150-450, DFA24-70 also serve this purpose. After people will buy a DFA24-70, they will more likely wait for a Pentax FF body to mount the lens on it (already hooked), and they'll be less price sensitive. The more time spacing between DFA lenses and FF body releases, the more people already invested in DFA lenses will compare the price of Pentax FF to the cost of switching body and lenses to another brand. If Ricoh was releasing a set of 3 DFA lenses and 1 Pentax FF body at the same time, the cost of Pentax FF upgrade could be compared to switching to Canon or Nikon equivalent setup. But if the Pentax DFA lenses and body are not released at the same time, buying the Pentax FF body only will look cheaper than switching to Canon or Nikon, even is the Pentax FF body is sold at a premium compared to what competitors will release.
In my opinion, following the spin-off of Sony semiconductors, and the introduction of Sony RX1II and A7IIr, and Canon 5Ds, it is very likely that Nikon will release new high-end FF models next year all equipped with 42+ Mpixel sensor and 4K video. So I guess Ricoh intends to release a similar product instead of looking obsolete right at the start (so Pentax FF won't be cheap, so better have Pentaxians already invested in DFA lenses).