Ricoh Picks Up Pentax Camera Business For 10 Billion Yen

Consolidation in the photography industry? It's happening. It's starting on a smaller scale, but it's likely to expand in due time. Ricoh has just announced they will be the ones picking up the Pentax camera business from Hoya, with a company known for copiers and scanners evidently wanting access to Pentax's SLR technology. What's a company like Ricoh going to do with it? That's a great question. It's a bit tough to think about a Ricoh-branded DSLR, and with Nikon and Canon already owning a lion's share of the market, one has to wonder how much success the company will have in this market, anyway.
 
The deal will see Ricoh paying around 10 billion yen (that's over $124 million) for the business, which is no small chunk of change. Here's the real question: do you trust the Ricoh brand name enough to invest in a Ricoh camera / DSLR? Hmm...