Re: Lens compatibility in perspective (WAS: Re: D-ist blurb in "AmericanPhoto"magazine)

[Joseph Tainter]

Rüdiger wrote:

"you are absolutly right, it would be technicaly no effort to allow stop 
down
metering with non A lenses, or metering in DOF mode an put it in the ML
memory.
Pentax has prevented this compability by perpose.
The people shall by new lenses, but that will not work. Pentax is loosing
his
only advantage over Canon and Nikon, the k-mount compabilty.
At lot of old K1000 and ME users would have bought the *istD, now the will
not.
If the usage of old lenses is not convinient, they will buy new AF lenses.
With the K-mount incompabilty Pentax is loosing their strongest marketing
argument."

I'll admit to knowing little about marketing, so the following is 
speculation. Pentax has been living off k-mount compatibility for years 
now. That is a declining market as older Pentax users quit or switch. So 
the switch to a new mount may mean that Pentax will try to increase its 
market share by recruiting new users, and is trying to increase 
profitability by forcing people to buy new lenses.

Joe