Price for E-A7 is £859.00 from Andertons Music Co. UK

If Google's calculation is correct it is $1315.11 ???

That's what I expected. It must be more expensive than The BK-5, which is much simpler.

Interesting, I really liked the bk5, had I known of the iPad app , I would have kept it.

Assuming that the BK-5 is in many parts identical to the BK-7m, it is really a good instrument. But obviously the E-A7 is really superior and has some features which go beyond the 800-900 euro segment, e.g.:
- 1,500 on-board sounds (vs. about 1,100)
- over 600 styles (vs. about 350)
- WAV sample expandibility
- 2 displays.

However, as a very critical remark: Roland, if you are able to release a completely new mid-class arranger, WHY don't you care about keeping promises and release tone expansions for the BK-9? ("The BK-9 is equipped with a user storage designed for future tone expansions"...) Releasing new models and forgetting about the ones released 2 years ago, that's a way to lose former buyers, I have to repeat.

BK5 is way short of what the BK7 has. BK9 is more like a BK7 with keys, and quite a number of improvements.

Oh, is it? I never tried the BK-5, but as it has always been slightly cheaper than the BK-7m despite the additional keybed and speakers, I suspected there must be something missing... I still have a high opinion of my BK-7m except just a few weaknesses (e.g. acoustic guitars).
The main advantage of the BK-9 is probably its 22 SuperNatural sounds. The other 500+ sounds are not such a big improvement over the BK-7m, as most of them stem from the SonicCell module or the Fantom X and are thus a bit dated and not of the high SRX library quality.

What direction and target is Roland going with this new arranger KB release?

I think the most important message here is that they haven't abandoned the arranger market completely, which was to be feared after the dissolution of Roland Europe.
But with Roland Europe's demise, I think the BK line has been given up, so they are obviously taking up the former "E" line again.
As Bachus said, one of the target groups in geographical terms might be the Turkish/middle east/Asian market, but I guess it will be marketed quite evenly worldwide. With the WAV sample expandibility, I guess it is not primarily focused on the older age groups.

There's already a Polish demo:

Piano drums and bass sound o.k.