Citations? Claiming that everything after the K10D sold worse and saying that the largest portion of current Pentax users are manual focusers are both things that require pretty heavy backup. Great claims require great proof and all that. Also, you've got a lot of people here that are willing to make a forum post or hit "like" when it comes to FF, but how many will lay down the cash when the time comes?
The D800 offers only 25,600 ISO when boosted, which is matched by the K-5. Of course, we all expect the D800 to have less noise, but only a few years ago we had 6400 MAX iSO, and that was scarcely useable. The point here is that APS-C has made more dramatic improvements than FF did over the same time period. The gap is indeed smaller - I've never said it isn't there, but it is 100% true that it isn't nearly as big as it once was.
I'd agree with you, all else being equal, but it isn't. FF glass is bigger, more expensive, and harder to make. A FF sensor doesn't count for anything if you don't have the glass to support it, and while the used market is substantial for Pentax, none of those used sales put dollars in Pentax' pocket. And as nice as the limiteds are, APS-C is a lot kinder to them than FF will be. Releasing a FF body without competitive lenses to sell with it wouldn't work (see Sony). Putting all the resources into manufacturing those lenses isn't going to be cheap.
If Pentax has to go in that direction, I most likely won't be following, but Sony isn't the only sensor manufacturer out there. They've worked with Samsung before if I'm not mistaken, and maybe something good will turn up. That's more problematic for FF than APS-C, though - finding a quality FF sensor to put in a camera body is harder than an APS-C one, so that isn't convincing.
"Good enough" is subjective, and APS-C viewfinders are good enough for most - just look at the market sizes. Not everybody needs a V8, and not everybody needs a massive SLR to haul around. Where is the most growth likely to be? I've yet to see a convincing argument that big viewfinder full frames are the largest area for new camera sales. Don't make the mistake of assuming that the majority of the market has the same values that you do.
True, but to make a comfortable profit in a high margin environment isn't easy to do - everybody would be otherwise. Pentax has less resources than the competition, so it would be easy for them to be undercut if they really started to rock the boat. Probably the most successful company in this regard is Apple, who offers design and appeal that somehow lets them operate on way larger margins than everybody else. You can try to do that just out of nowhere, but as a for instance, VW tried to move upmarket recently with their Phaeton, and it flopped horribly. If Pentax could do it, great, but that's a big, big if.
Prove it! You have no way of showing that losses are due to the lack of a full frame camera, and your doomsday claims are the same exact things that people have been saying for years. You've got no evidence to show that right now is any different.
Again, baseless conjecture. I personally was really considering moving to a D700 until the K-5 came out. I wanted something that could do a really solid job in indoor light and during wedding receptions, and while the k20 and k-7 were lacking, the k-5 is everything I could ask for. I (like many people) don't care about whether my camera is the best, I care about whether it is enough to do what I need it to do. That is the case for the K-5 in basically all of my use cases.
My main point is this: This online forum, dpreview, and the FF fanatics that have been yelling about it for years, are a very vocal but very limited demographic. Many of these folks shoot on old manual glass, and even if a FF body came out they might not have the cash to buy one (not to mention lenses). You can tell me all you want about you and your friend and this other guy you know who will lay down preorder money for a FF, but talk is cheap and, more importantly, we aren't a very representative group here on the forum.
For Pentax to prosper, they need to find profitable market segments where they can put out class leading products and make lots of money. I've seen little actual data or supported argument explaining why FF is somewhere that Pentax could do well. There are no end of opinions about halo products and people going for Nikon or Canon because of a lack of high-end options, but there's no data I've ever seen to back that up. If a high-end halo product is all that a manufacturer needs to motivate buyers, then Sony should've done great.
The case for FF used to be really good IMO, but it seems to me that it is less solid now than it once was. Sony has had a failure in that segment, there's more competition there than there used to be, and APS-C has been improving a lot. The biggest area of growth right now seems to be on the other end of SLRs - mirrorless and other small SLRs.
