It seems that this thread is a bit of a rite of passage on this site, so I thought I would contribute.
Jeez... I see another Pentax every other time I go out. I actually shared a coffee with a nice Korean tourist a while back on account of the fact that we were both carrying K-x's. My home town is a bit of a tourist stop, so there are always lots of DSLR's on the street and while easily ninety percent are Canikons with the balance being a smattering of Leica, Sony and Pentax... I still see Pentax a fair bit. Quite memorably, in September last year I was shooting at a medieval fare when a French bloke tapped me and waved his K-5. We spent the rest of the afternoon shooting together... and he had a pro-bag FULL of Ziess and Pentax * glass. The brief samples I took with that glass did nothing to assist my LBA! Lovely stuff. I value those experiences more than I would seeing ten thousand Pentaxes dangling from the necks of tourists.
But I digress.
So... my take is that yes Pentax is rare, but that should be no surprise. Going by these posts, most of us seem to have arrived here by one of three paths. The first are those who shot Pentax in the film days, the second are those that inherited Pentax gear, and the third are those that arrived during the digital age after plenty of hard research revealed Pentax as superior value. There is no room in that mix for the average consumer who wanders into a mainstream store and asks the sales assistant what they should get. Also, there is not much room in that mix for the aspiring pro who may well recognize the competitiveness of Pentax gear but sees Canikon as safer overall SYSTEMS with which to advance their careers (hard to argue with that, actually). Consumers and wannabe pros account for the vast majority of DSLRs seen hanging around necks. Thus... we see ten Canikons for every other type of DSLR out there.
So, as I see it Pentax appeals to a very, very narrow niche of discerning enthusiasts and sentimentalists, somewhere off to the side of the normal spectrum ranging from brand-conscious consumer, up to gear-headed "prosumer" and then through to pragmatic professional.
I for one, hope this never changes. While I wish Pentax well and certainly a bit more market share wouldn't hurt to ensure the company's survival, I sincerely hope that Pentax never resorts to the mass-marketing ploys, vapour-ware announcements and lego-brick upgrade paths of Canikon. I do hope they continue to offer quirky alternatives as well as good solid cameras built to high photographic standards rather than the banal demands of the marketeers and product managers.
In the meantime, I will revel in the knowledge that wherever I am in the world, if I see another Pentax I can raise mine, smile and know I am in the company of a fellow traveler. Can't do that with a Canikon. Well, I could... but I'd be grinning and waving a camera a lot, and people wouldn't know what for
.