14 DAY TRIAL // Hoya, the company that owns the Pentax brand, just announced that it has reached an agreement with Ricoh to sell its camera business for 10 billion yen which translates into approximately $124 million US.
The move was expected by many as Hoya has bought Pentax in 2007 mainly for its medical technology, which will remain with the company.
Pentax is the world's tenth largest camera maker, if we take into account shipped units, but sales have been declining in the last year with 13 percent.
The company attributed this trend to falling prices in the extremely competitive digital compact camera segment.
From Ricoh's point of view, the acquisition of Pentax was motivated by the company's desire to enter the consumer digital camera market, where it will use “the small and lightweight interchangeable lens camera technology, lens technology and sales channels held by the Pentax Imaging Systems Division.”
The transaction is expected to be finalized at the end of October 2011, after the Pentax Imaging Systems Division is split from its mother company.
Just a couple of days ago, Pentax has announced the Pentax Q, which is the world's smallest interchangeable lens camera, and uses a rather odd 1/2.3-inch image sensor with a resolution of 12.4MP.
This means that the sensor measures around 1/8th the size of the sensor used in Micro Four Thirds cameras and 1/13th the size of the APS-C format used for Sony's NEX series.
The Pentax Q also packs a 460,000 dot LCD on the rear, raw output in the DNG format, sensor-shift image stabilization and dust-removal, 1080p30 HD movie recording in H.264 format, 5 frame-per-second continuous shooting, an in-camera HDR option and magnesium alloy body with rubber front coating
Right now, we don't know if Ricoh plans to use the sensor that was developed by Pentax for its line of interchangeable lens cameras, or if it thinks about using the Micro Four Thirds standard. (via SlashGear)