Rumors: Ricoh wants to enter the mirrorless interchangeable camera market
The latest rumor I received is that Ricoh is planning to enter the mirrorless interchangeable camera market. This is not something that will happen soon – the plan for now is for 2018. The new product line is expected to be aimed at enthusiasts and professionals. A potential collaboration with another camera manufacturer is possible and Fuji was one of the names that was mentioned – both companies may work together on the development on a new larger X mount or something similar. Discussions are still in the early stage and options are still being explored, so take all this with a grain of salt.
It seems that the Ricoh GXR system is already discontinued (see also this post) and there is no sign that it will come back to life (not even listed on Ricoh USA website).
In the past few weeks I received two separate emails on this same topic. Unless somebody is playing games, there is a pretty good chance that this may actually happen.
I am still in the process of establishing my Ricoh/Pentax sources for this website. If you have any tips/rumors/news you would like to share, you can contact me anonymously here.