By the way, I was reading on some Pentax-specific forums some more details.
Apparently some of the articles on DPReview have either been somewhat twisted or completely wrong. (Specifically, that Phil posted earlier than Pentax had originally agreed to the merger and that the entire board quit - none of which is true.) The Washington Post article is also a bit FUD-filled, calling the camera division "struggling" when in fact they're well in the black at this point, winning awards, and last month the K10D was the top-selling DSLR in Japan.
There's a
Bloomberg article here also.
So far, any fears of Hoya jettisoning Pentax cameras seem to be unfounded, and the head of Pentax's camera division does have a seat on the new board I wouldn't be surprised to see the compact camera line-up trimmed, that's an especially brutal field to be in if you're not one of the top two or three companies, and Pentax compacts seem to mainly do well in the waterproof line, where only Olympus really competes.
We have to wait until October for the official press releases on their next DSLRs, but word from those who know is that they should be pretty impressive... I'll probably have to wait until then to decide if one of those is for me or if the K10D will still be my next camera of choice.
As for the camera itself... very neat, I'd consider one, it'd match my K1000 nicely, though I would want an integrated flash for when I don't have the big one handy. I was thinking about the Sigma DP1 the other day and that if you lopped the flash off one of the 6mp Pentax DSLRs and attached their "pancake" 21mm lens, it wouldn't be all that much larger than the Sigma, and give you more functionality for less money. OK, no Foveon sensor, but still awfully nice image quality in a relatively small package. The other DSLR manufacturers could do it too, but there's no comparable series of pancake lenses in any other mount, to the best of my knowledge.
