P&S digital cameras sales grew at a high rate. prices dropped even faster. plus a supply foulup with very few cameras being shipped for a short time made the difference. the digital camera division might have made money in the quarter otherwise. the telling factor is the *istD sales. if the numbers are true, Pentax has sold fewer than 25K units since it was introduced more than 10 months ago. from all reports the Digital Rebel and D70 are selling almost 4 times as many each month. i am sure selling 25K *istD units did not in any way recover the cost of developing the camera, and if the current rate continues, it will take 3 or 4 years to do so. if it were just the digital cameras, things wouldn't be so bad, but the endoscope and optical pickup lens prices fell faster than anticipated too and those divisions didn't make nearly as much as expected. Canon and Nikon have the DSLR market wrapped up and are pulling away rapidly from all of the competition. they are meeting their marketing goals.
Herb.... ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Miers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 12:49 PM Subject: RE: Pentax 1Q news FY-05 > Do you suppose all the companies will experience similar problems due to the > market becoming somewhat saturated already? They all must be having > problems selling since it is slowly driving the prices down. > You know it seems unlikely that even the pros demanding high end digital > technology can provided enough business to justify manufacturer of this type > of equipment. I would think they still depend on amateurs and enthusiasts > to make their minimum sales quota. If these quotas cannot be met it could > cause a lot of bad things. Future R&D in digital higher end systems could > see a huge slow down. Availability of same could be limited and continue to > be extremely pricey for a long time. Whether or not this trend could > prolong the life of film though is still iffy since film usage is still > driven by P&S type cameras which may still continue well with digicams. > Although I would expect that higher end film is driven by SLR usage mainly > which might get a bit of a reprieve over all of this.
