This has all got seriously off-topic.
But then, the topic was hardly serious in the first place, even if it threw up a few serious thoughts about the effect of the GFC on the sales of DSLRs.
Steering things back to the matter of Pentax's place in the DSLR market, we tend to forget that there are now major Asian markets that depend less on the rest of the developed world for their health.
The obvious one is China, and anyone who's travelled there in recent years will know that the size (and continued growth) of the domestic economy has provided them with a buffer against some of the sillier economic policies of many Western countries. The Chinese government has decided to release a lot of its accumulated surplus (you remember surpluses, don't you?) into their domestic economy to stabilise things further. The Chinese appetite for consumer goods and the means to satisfy it will therefore continue to grow apace, as will that of the Indian and other prosperous Asian nations.
So, forgive my optimism, but I think the pessimism expressed in Thom's predictions is ill-founded and inevitably biassed, given his cheerleader ("fan-boy" to others) status as far as camera brand loyalty goes.
PS: I use both Windows XP and Mac OS X, both of which are mature and stable computer operating systems, and neither of which appears in a digital camera, to my knowledge (excepting, of course mobile phones and the like, which don't really count, in most cases). Oh yes, and I drive a car and I walk, too, but that's how I get to most of my picture sites.