I am not kidding, but you are misunderstanding me because I was unclear.. When I "make" I mean "bring to the market" in the sense - developing. Not the assemblent nor the production.
The 67 system was developed in the 60's so development was paid for long ago, it was not paid for in the 80's. The system had paid itself over the years so Pentax earned money on it.
The Auto 110 was a niche system in the sense only a few lenses were developed for it and only one model which was updated a few times. The system only lived for a few years then it was discontinued in the early 80's. If it had been so successful as you implies, it would have lived longer.
None of those had the advanced electronics and amount of gadges of todays cameras.
Developing a new micro mount camera without mirrors requires new AF system (phase detect AF won't work) and lenses with new technology that works well with contrast detect AF (current lenses are too slow with contrast detect AF). Pentax needs to develop a fully electronic lens mount, something they have never done before. Also metering is different, because there is no viewfinder (metering and AF system in today's Pentax DSLR's sits in the viewfinder). So there are lots of things that needs to be developed from scratch by Pentax and this is expensive.
They simply can't take the K-mount and shrink it... It is not that easy.
Pentax had money for extravaganza in the 80's, like the worlds most complete manual focus lens system. And this system didn't sell so it was a disaster for Pentax that nearly killed the company. Thankfully for Pentax, the Espio range saved the company and during the 90's Pentax earned money from other cameras. For more than 20 years, the Pentax camera division has been unprofitable. Other areas within the company has paid for the cameras to be alive.
Now, Hoya has made it very clear when they took over - if the products are not selling, then Pentax will be detached or closed down. So Pentax has a press on themselves that wasn't there before.
When judging future products from Pentax, the new company policy has to be taken into account. Canon and Nikon can afford making losses on products, they can afford trying to step into a market and see what happens. Pentax, under the Hoya direction, can't.
Hoya has reduced the manufacturing and R&D units at Pentax. Canon and Nikon has much more R&D resources. Pentax has problem developing more than one camera at once, that is why the cameras they released lately has so much of the same within them. K-x is a K-m with some K-7 ideas. It was too expensive for Pentax to make a new design for the K-x so they simply re-used the K-m body.
Neither Nikon nor Canon have to do those cost cuttings and compromises, but Pentax have to.
You are free to believe what you want, but I don't agree with you that Pentax can support 4 systems on the market with full lens lineups when not even Canon and Nikon can do it - especially not when Hoya is running the bussiness and they are not prepared to pay for unprofitable products.
Pentax needs partners and for the moment, they are alone. Samsung is walking alone with the NX system and no announcements of new partners has been made. So for the moment, Pentax has very limited resources and a shrinked R&D department compared to the old times.
Pentax of today is not the giant it was in the late 70's and early 80's when K-mount was the dominant lens mount.
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Take care
R
http://www.flickr.com/photos/raphaelmabo
