The camera industry, just like the computer business, is extremely competitive. For example, in 1976 Minolta was the first to introduce its automatic XD-7 SLR camera with full multimode AE. Two years later, in 1978 the Canon A1 came out as what seemed to be a replica of the XD-7.
Since then, the Canon A-1 has retired and has been replaced by the T-series models. Minolta also introduced some new models such as the dimage series. But with the merger of Konica and Minolta, management has decided to cease all activities regarding photography.
In general, the Konica Minolta cameras are geared towards the professional photographer. The konica Minolta dimage a2 is an example of such a camera. The Konica Minolta dimage a200 is also a good example of a professional high-performance digital camera. Whereas the Minolta dimage z1 digital camera is a long-zoom camera with a 10x optical zoom aimed at the consumer market.
In the future, since Konica Minolta has decided to cease all activities regarding photography, it will be natural to see these models as discontinued on the market.