The Poser development team was recently let go and SM are doing a major re-shuffle. They have stated however they are still committed to Poser. I think changes like this will therefore delay any new version of Poser as it seems understandable that the new team will need to get up to speed. That said I am just voicing my personal view based on the information to hand.

Guess that can be both a good or bad thing, it might be good to get some fresh eyes and ideas involved to stir the soup so to speak :D but yeah some knowledge might be lost as well i guess. But think it depends a lot on what background those new developers have as stated earlier, I think programs like Poser have a lot of potential, if you look at Iclone, Daz etc. Have looked at a lot of videos of people using 3D to make comic books, art and what not, even though these people are very skilled at drawing etc, the time and benefits from using 3D in there workflow is so beneficial, always get very inspired looking at these videos.