Originally posted by nosnoop Pentax Q only started to climb up the sales chart after its price drop to around $300. It really did not sell well at its original price.
To be honest, I think Pentax has little to celebrate in mirrorless market. It could not get over 10% market share with only 4 competitors before Canon came along. Now that the EOS-M is released, Pentax would probably continue to stay at the bottom with its current line up.
In terms of manufacturers, this is the ranking for 2012 mirrorless market in Japan:
1 - Olympus 29.8%
2 - Panasonic 23.6%
3 - Sony 20%
4 - Nikon 14.3%
5 - Pentax 9.4%
They did quite OK, with little effort and cameras which were too expensive in the beginning (the K-01 wasn't even available for the entire year). Of course, we're talking about Japan and that means Pentax actually had marketing campaigns - but AFAIK they weren't serious about that until few months ago (I might be wrong on that).
Both the Q system and the K-01 were leftovers from Pentax Hoya, and it took some time for Pentax Ricoh to adjust their strategies to match the new premises. I hope they're making a profit on the K-01, and they're not just clearing them out.