Hello Tom, The one area that we can't know about is their estimation of the competition's similar offerings. At the time, they may have felt (logically) that both Canon and Nikon would be bringing out something close enough in feature/price/performance to compete and not give them an overwhelming interest level.
We also can't really tell when they started to react. It is very possible, that things could have been much worse with regards to availability. They could have seen the Canon/Nikon offerings once they were out and realized that they would get a flood of orders. The delays we saw could have been partially to counteract this problem. I'm not defending here, but giving you some other ideas rather than just your own that Pentax totally screwed up the marketing impact. So in a nutshell, they could have easily overestimated the competition offerings which would forecast much smaller demand for the K10D. Once seeing the competition, they could have started ramping up for greater demand, but just could not do it fast enough to satisfy the market. And yes, I agree that they are losing sales to other brands because they are not on the shelf. In my local store, there are boxes of D80's sitting there waiting to be sold. If someone walks in and asks for a K10D - and there isn't one, the store is going to sell the Nikon instead, if the buyer will do so. The store is interested in sales of ANY body, not specific bodies. I am happy that Pentax has this kind of problem, rather than the other kind (mediocre, non-compeitive, higher priced). -- Best regards, Bruce Wednesday, December 6, 2006, 9:16:01 AM, you wrote: >> > The high tech marketplace is littered with failed enterprises that >> > mis-calculated their chances. I can think of 3 camera companies at >> > least. Being conservative is often a wise course of action. Stop >> > complaining about it until you are risking your own money, or own the >> > company. >> >>I can understand your point regarding technology vs risk too Bob. But >>to think that Pentax couldn't have appreciated the response to a 10MP >>camera after over three years of nothing but rehashes built around the >>same (albeit capable) 6MP sensor is a bit unbelievable Especially at >>the price point vs feature set of the K10D. >> >>-- >>Rob Studdert TC> That's what I think as well. No one was suggesting they should be stupid TC> and risk the business. OTOH, they, being Pentax, should be MORE in the know TC> and in the BEST position, better than any of us, to guage and anticipate the TC> market. I was simply surprised they would not have anticipated a high TC> demand for their flagship which by all accounts has alot of bang for the TC> buck. TC> I'll be interested to see the graphs on how sales of the K10D peak and TC> plateau. TC> Tom C. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
