I think the Arduino is now just a "Form Factor", that allows you to plug similar boards together, with fair versatility, and little work.

With boards like the Amicus18 that has the same "Form Factor" but uses a PIC, you can use PicBasic Pro, Proton, C, ASM or whatever with all those Arduino shields. It might have started with an ATMEL chip and pseudo C, but it's not limited to that anymore.

Question... is there a good percentage of commercial products that are developed using PBP?
Almost everyone I talk to is using PBP.
Answering the melabs support calls has nothing to do with it.

Final question... Can you possibly hint at when we might see this "new" version.
That information is Top Secret!
So you can probably find it on Wiki Leaks.