Hi I guess you all notices the nex cameras from Pentax and Samsung.
The seem to be quite competitive.
At a similar price to the A700 the offer:

- more MP (lots of people moan about the MP race, but somehow I think most of the people still want more MPs)

- SSS equivalent Sensor Shifting (this is no longer USP of Sony, everybody except Canikons have it - theems like those guys bet on the wrong horse on the long term)

- Live View (I don't go into detail about the discussions on the usefulness here)

- Weather Sealing and basically all other features the A700 has

So I guess (hope? ;-) that sony has to further drop the A700 price, since this camera at the moment is a "me too" camera at most at the moment in this market segment.
Don't get me wrong, I used this camera it is a good working horse, but it's wow-effect is long gone, now just prices count. And especially in Europe (Austria) the camera is expensive as ever...

Olles