How the D40 makes sense

There are a lot of people up in arms over the D40's likely feature set.

From a marketing standpoint the D40 makes a lot of sense, at the right price point...

If you are going to stay in the 6 MP market, you need to compete on price.

Where does that mean you need to be?

B&H will sell me a K110D with an 18-55 lense for $559. $459 body only.

I can buy it for less at less reputable vendors.

Now Nikon wants to have a body that can undercut that, and still make a profit. The D50 is probably running out of margin.

If you take a stepper motor and controller and some buttons out of the body, you might save $5 in parts. That little LCD is probably a buck or two. If you sell 200,000 cameras, some pretty serious money.

And 95% of all buyers for that camera won't notice or won't care that some Nikon lenses won't work with the camera... They might buy the 55-200 if they don't get the kit that comes with it, but once someone starts dropping more that $2-300 on lenses they're going to be Jonesing for a higher level camera too...

But, they'll have a lense or two from Nikon, and then when they go to buy their next camera...

Not an upgrade from a D50, but unless the K10D lives up to its specs and actually gets to market, maybe bad news for Pentax...