Breaking the $1K barrier for full frame dSLR (35mm, that is): Who? When?

[statistician]

When is it going to happen? And who is going to do it?

Lets look at the current crop first.
Right now, full frame 35mm stands at about $2200 (the "old" 5D, was about $1800-1900 with rebates). Considering the $2700 pricing of the 5D-II,  the $3000 pricing of the Nikon D700
and the Sony A900 raises a lot of questions, if not eyebrows. The D700 and the A900 are in many ways underspeced compared to the 5D-II. I don't think any pro will take the A900 seriously. How many "serious amateurs" will spend $3000 on an A900??? I think the A900 (like the A700) will struggle in the marketplace. Sony has to rethink its price structure. Sony has much better  chances in the consumer dSLR market than in the pro dSLR market. A full-frame sub $1K A800 may be the only way to sell all those Sony lenses?! How about a Nikon D900?

How about a 5D-II sans hidef video, and maybe with "only" 15 MP? They'd have to price it above the 50D's $1400 though - unlikely to break the $1K barrier. Could the successor to the 50D, say in 2009 or 2010,  be full-frame? 15MP seems to be the outer limit for pixel count with low noise [5-micron pixels] for crop frame (without a major technology breakthrough). Full-frame and hidef video are two possible growth paths for the 50D. Time will tell.

Back to the original question. Who is going to do it?  Pentax+Samsung (Pensung? Samtax?, i.e. a Pentax camera using a Samsung sensor) might have a full-frame at PMA 2009. But the pricing is likely to be above $1K, unless they decide they want to sell a LOT of cameras, and lenses!

The other possibility could be someone outside the familiar names. RED may be one, but there are others. 
 
As Bob once wrote "the people who know won't tell you, and the people who tell you don't know"!
So all that remains is speculations and wishes.

Anyway, what most consumers really need is a 4 megapixel camera with clean ISO 50,000.

[Bob Atkins]

I'm not sure we will ever see a full frame DSLR selling (new) for under $1000. The Sony 850 is currently the cheapest at $1999.99. While the cost of full frame cameras may come down because of technology advances, they may go up due to inflation, so they may never cross the $1000 barrier.

My guess is that we might see something from someone (possibly Sony) closer to the $1500 mark, but I don't expect that either Canon or Nikon will offer a full frame camera under $2000. I think that "pro" level crop sensor cameras will occupy the $1000 to $2000 space.