Good morning,
The plus side of disc brakes becoming the norm, if you look at
Halfords Carrera range which are now all or almost all disc, is that it becomes harder to sell very low spoke count wheels to the commodity market as the wheels need to cope with the disc.
They do a rim brake version of the new Dura Ace, but I think you don't get the wireless changing with that. Which may or may not be relevant.
This is certainly true according to the publicity, but I wonder about the reality, will there actually ever be any to buy?
I have a feeling that Shimano may be on a route to merge Ultegra and Dura-Ace to a single product line targeted at the elite race community and those who can afford but don't need it and 105 at everyone else.
For a while now the view that 105, Ultegra and Dura-Ace are too close in performance for the price difference has been at least reasonable even if you disagree with it.
By keeping 105 mechanical only and the with Ultegra/Dura-Ace as electronic only there is a clear big difference, but where is the difference between 12 speed Ultegra and Dura-Ace?
The early Di2 Ultegra and Dura-Ace mechs had different motors, Dura-Ace had a bespoke design, Ultegra an off the shelf one, apparently for 12 speed this is no longer the case.
Obviously we don't yet know what the real world retail prices are going to be, will the retail market require Dura-Ace to be close in price to Ultegra because of a lack of perceived difference or will it be happy for an extra grand "because it is Dura-Ace"?
I know that we all see lots of £5k-£10k bikes advertised and reviewed, but from Shimano's perspective are they selling in sufficient quantities to justify two premium brands?
As these high end group sets are a relatively small proportion of the market and if all the pros are riding disc brakes who is going to want to offer rim brakes? Sure there will be some but it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that this will be too small a number to justify the next generation of products so possibly when the early production runs are exhausted no more will be made.
Bye
Ian