That's actually cheap. Maybe even to cheap for many uses. If you look at a paraprofessional's gross income to capital ratio many of them really should be using Mamiya or Hasselblad equipment and many are. The higher end equipment gives a technical advantage over those using Nikon/Canon gear
What sort of daft reasoning is that?
Photographers buy equipment that does the best job for their needs. An event photographer that covers motorsport may make more money than a product photographer, but this does not mean the sports photographer has to use a Hasselblad and the food photographer a Canon. More megapixels are not a technological advantage compared to fast focussing, long lens with fast apertures and 6 fps when doing photojournalism or sports. Papparazzi can also make silly money, do you think they should all buy a 60mp PhaseOne back?
But the real reason RED will not "shake up the market" is that they simply do not build very many cameras. If you want to buy a camera you have the reserve a "production slot" and then wait months while they work off their waiting list. In order to "shake up the market" RED will need to ramp up production and get their gear into Best Buy and Amazon.com
Simply by introducing a better product they will shake up the market as has already happened with their video kit. Just because they may not produce millions in their first year is actually not that important. This also may be why Canon and Nikon have suddenly added video to their cameras as they are no doubt well aware of RED's intentions and there's been no technical reason before as to why it hadn't happened earlier.
I have actually been involved in a camera design. (I did some software ran the guts of the camera, moved charge off the CCD, sampled the pixels and recorded data.) I'll tell you, cameras are not "rocket science" they are simple. But where it gets real, real hard real fast is designing a factory that can turn out many cameras per day. The factory automation is 10,000 times more complex then a camera. I don't think Red has the factory part down yet.
But RED is very different from most start ups as the owner is already stupidly rich from another manufacturing business. So this will be less of a hurdle as RED has very deep pockets and is far more interested in producing good products than simply making money, plus if they design the product well it may be simpler than conventional products for RED to produce.