Not as 'silly' as it seems.
I'm not a minolta SLR user. I'm a happy D7i user. My SLR is an old Canon T70, which until our big European trip at the begining of the year I had hardly used for 3 years since getting a Kodak DC200 DigiCam. If I had the D7i then, the Canon would have stayed at home....
Some conjecture -
Minolta is 'between a rock and a hard place'. Their high end SLRs seem to be in a 'prosumer' niche, they don't seem to have a very big 'pro' following.
From what I've read, the Minolta SLRs are much lighter than the 'pro' cameras by Nikon and Canon. This makes them popular in 'ProSumer' segment as they are lighter cameras but distrusted in the Pro area who like to carry around armoured tanks.
I'm sure there are Pro photograhers who will swear by their Minolta kit, but they appear to be in the minority.
Consumer photography is going digital and a very rapid rate - now there are 'digital film' print services poping up all over the place, this trend is going to get faster.
I just sent, online, 10 jpeg photo's to a local Kodak agent for printing, I've seen a camera store with a 'terminal' you walked up to, stuck a media card in, selected the images, and they were transfered to the shops 'minilab' for printing on the spot.
Minolta's Dimage range seems to be selling as fast as they can make em.
I'm sure Minolta can see the trend where (Pro)Consumer photography has gone almost purely digital. The serious pros still using film are all off using medium format or 'tank' like Canon or Nikon gear. The market for their high end SLRs will have almost disappeared.
Concentrating R&D on the high end Prosumer digital market may make perfect sense, as in a few years there will not be a Prosumer 'film' market to speak of anymore.
I think Minolta's best bet would be a SLR body that can have film or digital versions with minimal changes between the versions (or even interchangeable backs!) so that R&D costs, parts and some of the production line is shared between the film and digital products.
They are going to have to do something in the DSLR space, if nothing else to be able to use their range of lenses in the digital realm.
