Good sum up Fred.
As far as "any variation in this can only be justified by a lower cost, vastly improved convenience, support and reliability..
ASA's DDM85 @ $5k USD (or there abouts) more expensive than the PME supports lower weight for starters. its THEORETICAL encoder resolution and pointing accuracy is in the tenths of arc-seconds. Support? I dont think there is any (from what I've heard from ASA owners and seen on forums) Reliability? Well, pure and simple, It hasn't been out long enough to judge its reliability. We all know that a PME can be set up in a remote site, and then not touched by anyone for years and still have the same performance it did on day one. That's a definite one up.
For a portable setup - the ASA mounts have some features that do seriously increase its convenience... the polar align routine looks pretty damn cool, computer aided balancing etc.. its all pretty sweet stuff.. The kicker though... the DDM60 holds similar weight as a Tak EM200, but costs 5500 Euros...
The proposed "Mini-ME" that software bisque announced at AIC this year is aimed at a similar (lower) price point to the DDM60, with higher weight capacity, similar accuracy and the well known know how and execution of Software Bisque.. Lets not even go into how you'd go if you had both mounts side by side with a problem you couldnt solve, you sent ASA and SB an email at the same time and then see which mount is up and running first.