Marketing wise, there are only TWO possible reasons for such a price drop.
1) Competition is trashing Pentax K3's sales to a point that inventory is stacking up and sales are next to frozen. Comment: From another thread, it seems this is not the case since it has been reported that some major retailers like Adorama, are out of stock for the K3 and backordering several customers. 2) New model soon to be announced (or released) that will automatically stop sales of the remaining K3 stock. Comment: Historically, Pentax has issued an "improved" or "revised" edition of their flagship cameras, usually within the 18 to 24 months time window after releasing the first model. This happened with the K2 (improved with K2DMD), the ME (with ME Super), the PZ1 (with the PZ1P), the ZX5 (with the ZX5n), the *ist (with the *istD, -first jump into digital from film), then K10D (with K20D), and more recently, with the K5 (with two extra versions of the K5ii and K5iis). **
If history tends to repeat itself over time, then its about time we see a new remodeled, improved version of the K3, don't you think so?
---------- Post added 10-22-2014 at 07:40 PM ----------
Originally posted by Adam My guess would be $749-799 for the body only, with no extras. I guess we'll have to wait and see!
I don't think you'll get B&H or Adorama to sell you the body without the grip and lower the total price. I don't know what's the retail ratio between bodies and grips, but I feel that if they are not sold together at the initial purchace, chances are that later very few grips will sell "alone".