My current stage synthesizer (Korg Kronos) is a sampler. It's also a DAW and an audio interface. Will I ever use it for sampling or sequencing? Unlikely. I use it as a highly-configurable ROMpler. But it's cool that the feature is in there.

https://www.attackmagazine.com/features/long-read/nine-samplers-that-defined-dance-music/
 

Regardless of any debate about the meaning of the word "sampler," I must admit that when I first explored Kontakt I was shocked that you couldn't sample audio with it, and this led me to question what I'd heard everyone saying about it being the industry standard sampler. 
 
Maybe I'm just being old fashioned. In the early 90's I had an 8-bit sampling cartridge for my Amiga - we wouldn't call them samplers because it was really just an ADC with audio inputs. I would trigger the resulting samples with OctaMED, a tracker. We would reserve the word "sampler" for units like the S3000 which both sampled and played. Likewise I would have never called OctaMED a "sampler" because all it did was trigger and manipulate the samples. 
 
I wonder what's stopped NI from introducing recording functionality into Kontakt. It doesn't seem like it would be too much of an undertaking, Geist does it without much fanfare. 

Fleer

Kamikaze
In the 90's, I had an Alesis Quadrasynth.

Still have the original one. Never even tried it. Dern.

OT, but...   I still have a Quadrasynth + Piano (8MB!!!) and use it for live gigs to this day.  In fact, it's the only keyboard I use, 20 years later. 
 

I was in love with it when I got it. Still am, after all those years. Never plugged it in. She's lying next to an unplugged Alesis Fusion. Sometimes I touch their keys. Lovingly. Smoothly. Knowing the day will come. Lord almighty, that day will come.

And then, as the great Warren Z professed, let nothing come between us.

Mesh

bapu

Mesh

bapu
.

 
ok, ok, ok, I see your point.

 
point taken?

 
At this point, I think it's pointless to be asking questions like that.  

Especially since no one took your point. It's still right where you left it.

Stop pointing at him!

I'll bypass the conversation about whether Kontakt is a sampler.

But, I will point to a recent link from Plugin Guru that illustrates how he's made it easy, easy to grab any Wav files you have on hard disk and drop a them into Kontakt - complete with all sorts of controls.

This is very illuminating and he has added to the convenience of Kontakt to play samples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQR1PWjXA2k

Fleer
Stop pointing at him!

He started it.