Pentax Pulling Out of the Compact Game, Will Focus on DSLRs and Mirrorless

Last October Ricoh sealed the deal with Pentax, buying out the company for a sizeable $124-million. Since then we haven’t seen any major changes as Pentax has gone about its business as usual. That, however, isn’t going to be the case for much longer. According to the President of Pentax Imaging Ricoh, Noboru Akabane, there is a major change on the way: Pentax will be dropping compact, fixed lens camera development all-together, leaving all of that to Ricoh.

While Pentax focuses on its admittedly more popular DSLR and mirrorless options, the Ricoh brand will take over production of all cameras falling into the compact category. No word yet on what will happen to the Ricoh GXR system, but at this point it seems that all future SLRs and mirrorless offerings from Pentax Imaging Ricoh will sport the Pentax name, while future compacts will come labeled Ricoh.