Hoya admits Pentax needs alliance in the long term to survive

The Imaging Insider spotlights an interview the Hoya CEO gave to Reuters talking about Pentax, and matter-of-factly pointing out that in the long-term, in order to survive, their "digital cameras" (aka Pentax) would need an alliance with another company.

We will have reactions to this after it propagates to the various Pentax forums.

Opinion and Speculation
Samsung is currently the closest partner Pentax has, with their co-operation on the 35mm DSLRs. Samsung certainly has the size to absorb Pentax cameras, and probably needs them if they want to make any in-roads in 35mm DSLRs.

Pentax also had some clone compact designs with Casio.

However, if you put on the completely crazy speculation hat, here is something that may make even more sense: Panasonic and Olympus combining to get Pentax. The 4/3rds alliance currently doesn't have a larger than "2X/wrt 35mm" sensor format camera, and with 35mm-full-frame being perhaps a Sony release or two away from becoming more affordable, the 4/3rds alliance may need to come up with a long-term solution for sensor-sizes beyond "2X". Pentax would give them an instant, risk-free solution, and they wouldn't have to explain why after seven years of 4/3rds they had to come up with 8/3rds ;-)

The Pentax brand would also fit in with the old-school Japanese Panasonic approach of value and function. Panasonic is currently "digesting" Sanyo, but Pentax is nowhere near as big since they have a much narrower focus than Sanyo. They would also be able to save a lot of money from current Pentax R&D and operations by using available Panasonic sensors, body-parts (remember "Matsushita factory-fire delays Optio A40"?), and manufacturing capacity (LX3, GH1, TZ5K supply issues aside).

This would also keep Pentax in Japanese hands, which also appears to be an important issue in Japanese business.

The 4/3rds alliance has been very aggressive with Micro Four Thirds in 2009, and if they want to make their presence felt in the traditional interchangeable-lens market of Canon, Nikon and Sony-Minolta, getting Pentax and the K-mount would be the fastest and lowest risk approach there is out there.

Another benefit it would give the 4/3rds alliance is the 645 digital project, which would put them ahead of Canon/Nikon in terms of sensor-size, and with Leica launching the S-system, it raises the profile of medium format. It is clear Pentax, as much as it tries to make the most of what they have available, does not have enough resources to push this out the door the way it needs to be done to make it competitive.

Let's not forget that both Olympus and Panasonic have gone out of their way to make pro-caliber and/or photographer-priority type of cameras (E1, L1, L10), perhaps at the detriment of mass-market success.

Again, please note, this segment is marked opinion and speculation!