Originally posted by Tony Lens If they take away the k mount the game is over.
Is this really true? Let's look at what else they sell.
- Pentax Q: Has found a market in Japan and sells fairly well. Pentax only seems to add one lens per year and make minimal changes to the body, but they still sell. I'd say they are making money here.
- WG and other compacts: They don't even make these themselves. It's questionable how much of their own design is in the cameras. If they weren't making money, they could easily pull the plug, but I guess it's still worth their while to do it.
- Ricoh GR: Critically acclaimed and has held it's retail price fairly well considering it's getting on for two years old. There's clearly potential to do more here.
- Pentax 645: An $8,500 camera that they can hardly make enough of. It's clearing out what stock they had of FA 645 lenses and the new ones sell for a small fortune.
Now what about K-mount? Considering the speed K-mount cameras are discounted, I'd say they struggle to sell them. It's also notable that they have to maintain a big stable of lenses to compete with Canon and Nikon, but don't sell anything like the quantity. I think this is the most marginal part of Ricoh's business.
Originally posted by Tony Lens The Pentax-Ricoh is allive due to the k mount and the legacy lenses.
This is a bit of a double-edged sword. Of course they have some loyal customers, but by now many of those customers are well trained to wait for huge discounts, like those being offered now. They also have a lot of the lenses they need, so new lenses are a hard sell. It might be a challenge to get someone to switch mount, but once they have jumped, they have to buy a new set of lenses.
I'm not advocating that Ricoh ditch K-mount, and I don't think they will. Actually, I'd be upset if they did that because I've built up something of an investment by now. But I think the idea that K-mount is the strongest part of their business is a bit fanciful. In fact I think it's more likely that the other parts of the business are propping up K-mount at the moment.