what what i have been reading, the only reason that Pentax is still in the camera business is to give brand recognition to its medical and imaging components sales. in total camera sales, Pentax has been hovering around 3% market share for nearly a decade. the camera division lost money for a couple of years before rebounding for 2003, but the most optimistic forecast by Pentax shows market share holding nearly constant. the only places where Pentax is forecasting market share increases is in dual purpose DVD/CD lens components where Pentax is around 30% or so of the total, and endoscopes, where Pentax is about 15% of the total. Pentax hopes to grow to 40% and 20% respectively, but no-one seems to believe them. people expect Pentax to be able to come close to meeting its sales target of 2.3 million digital cameras for 2004 but to be unable to grow much beyond 3M after that. total film camera sales of all types are expected to drop to under 200K units by the end of next year. Casio Exlim and Pentax Optio cameras are nearly identical under the covers, including lenses, but in Japan, Pentax never seems to break the top 30 in terms of sales while the nearly identical Casio seems to be in the top 3 all the time. as far as anyone can tell, this is deliberate. most of Pentax's money is made overseas with Europe being the largest and North America second.
Herb.... ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pål Jensen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 7:26 PM Subject: RE: The public and Pentax > Although this fits well in with Pentax lack of marketing strategies (perhaps it is a strategy!), I was actually told that Pentax had no plan to meet demand of the *ist D ever. They would never make any volume with this camera. This was at the introduction and plans may have changed since for all I know... > I believe the *ist D only purpose is to provide Pentax with a DSLR signalising that they will continue to make SLR's. The *ist D probably virtually only sell to people thats already within the Pentax system. > Perhaps the camera is a loss leader anyway and Pentax may loose money on every one for all we know...
