You would be very suprised then..

Well, not 'very' surprised...it's been obvious for a while that ATA has been biting more and more out of SCSI's traditional markets with every performance iteration.
But I wasn't aware that it was quite as close to being in a position to overthrow SCSI as 'king of the hill' as you have alluded. As I see it (and I am obviously not the expert that you are), SCSI's only real benefits over ATA have always been performance and scalability. Once those are removed ATA wins.

The only thing really holding ATA drives back is that the manufacturers save their fastest mechanism (10K-15K RPM) for their high priced SCSI lines.

Do you think that is to deliberately and artificially prolong SCSI's market share, or is it that the costs associated with developing the fastest mechanisms are what drives SCSI pricing? If the latter, would there be a strong market for 15K RPM ATA drives if that resulted in those drives being identically priced to 15K SCSI drives?

How do you see serial ATA affecting the SCSI market?

The reason for the enduring popularity of the ATA interface ... This makes it ideal for embedded applications

That's why I suspected that the intended market for these solid state disks would be military and aerospace. (And eventually in-car/personal mp3 players )

Sorry for all the questions, I hope that you understand that the opportunity to gain insight from someone who is a guru in this field is too good to pass up.