Originally posted by Mr Spocko Ricoh has always been a small player in the camera market.
Yep, they were a small player back in 1970 when I bought my first one. Back then the big players were Nikon (still here), Pentax (sort of still here), Topcon (gone), Konica (gone), and Minolta (gone). Canon (still here) had a market position a bit stronger than Ricoh (still here) but somewhat less than Mamiya/Sekor (still here) or Yashica (gone) and about the same as Exakta (gone). Ricoh was about as strong as Praktica (gone) and Fuji (still here) and a little stronger than Petri (gone). Olympus (still here) was making cameras, just not FF 35mm SLRs. Sony was making radios and stereo equipment. Ditto for Panasonic.
Oh...and companies like Leica (still here), Hasselblad (still here), Alpa (still here, sort of), Zeiss (still here), Rollei (gone), Linhoff (still here), and Bronica (gone) were trundling along making low numbers of high quality cameras for those who could afford them or who needed them in their work.
Oh! Almost forgot...the biggest name in photography at the time was Kodak (doing its best now to exit gracefully).
I guess all the above adds up to an excellent reason to not buy a K-3!
Steve
(...only accounted for a small number of the players at the time, but it is enough to say that Ricoh is still here...)