Originally Posted by *isteve 
I have contacts within Pentax UK, I met the head of Pentax France, plus I spent a long time talking to Ben. (snip)
I seriously doubt any of those individuals would actually know about the things you wrote. Regardless, did any of those individuals specifically say the things you wrote and I quoted? If not, what you wrote is really speculation, guesswork, interpretations, or reasoning on your part, not hard facts. Since we've certainly seen enough of all that recently, and what you wrote seemed to be presented as something more, I wanted some clarification before applying too much weight to it. Thanks for providing that to this point.
stewart