Pentax's future: Is the writing on the wall?

History shows that many great brands (Contax, Yashica, Minolta) who were taken over won't survive a few years down the line.

Is the writing on the wall for Pentax with another change of ownership?

People buy things to use and profit from, by and large. I should imagine that Ricoh are spending their money to expand and improve their photographic business and as we have two modestly sized concerns (in terms of cameras anyway) they should be able to benefit from this.

You don't mention the troubled companies that survived for a very long time, or still survive, such as Hasselblad, Rollei and Leica. Or the tiny specialists such as Alpa.

If the axe ever did fall, my Pentax kit wouldn't disintigrate in sympathy with the event, but I feel a lot more optimistic that in fact the future could well be very exciting.

Congratulations John on your 13,000th post!!!

Cheers....another John but not so well posted!

I agree with John R and I expect my kit to be working after I'm not

I just hope my lenses will be compatible with the new Penric or Rictax

Regards

Minolta lives on in the Sony range.
Maybe the in time the Pentax name will go, maybe not. I can't imagine Ricoh bought it just to kill it.

Of course they won't kill it. I am thinking, the name might go.Pentax sounds so nice. But long term can they compete. The good thing is the k5 should keep most of us going for years.

According to everything I have read Ricoh bought Pentax to get back into the DSLR side of things. If you consider how many Pentax owners there are in relation to Ricoh I think it would be suicide to do away with the name.

Personally I'm not worried if the next camera is branded Ricoh or Pentax as long as I can continue to use my K mount lenses with full functionality.

Just be glad Kodak didn't buy them .. I am not a brand snob but there is no way I would carry a DSLR round with Kodak on it.

Sony did away with KM

Agree with Mike. As long as the K lives on, I'm not too worried. Probably wouldn't have felt the same if Samsung had bought Pentax out though! But I suspect Pentax will remain as the name for Ricoh's DSLRs though. Just like AOC used Pentax as the name for their early SLRs before Pentax became the main brand name.

There is a possibility that they may have no choice but to change the name if Hoya are retaining the medical optical business. It seems unlikely to me that both companies will be able to market wildly differing products using the same brand name.

Hoya may elect to change the name of their Pentax products of course.

The Hoya side of the Pentax range is stuff like endoscopes. We know where they can stick those

I heard that they are going to change the
name to Ricohigh in order to get
better write-ups on a certain blog

As long as it's not Ricochet and bounces back at them with dire consequences

Ricoh are buying Pentax Imaging Systems, so I think we can assume they would have wanted the name. That is critical in having a respected brand name to build on.

Not sure about the spotting scopes, telescopes, binoculars and other Pentax optical products that haven't really been specifically mentioned.

Sony did drop the Konica-Minolta names, but basically because Sony was better known at the time and they wanted the expertise, not the names. They kept all the technology and for a long time the products were pretty much the same. Now we are starting to see new developments, but it has taken a while. The Pentax situation is slightly different, but we don't really know anything yet.

ever heard of rolls royce?

so long as the mounts are still supported I dont care about the brand name.