Touring bikes: Index or friction shifting?

On Apr 23, 6:48*pm, Ryan Cousineau wrote:
In article ,
wrote:

wrote:

Brifters without a doubt.

I'm curious.... any stats on how many bikes are sold
each year with al the various systems?

Would be interesting to see what the top dog is sales
wise

About 100 million bikes are made every year:

http://quickrelease.tv/?p=279

The US consumes 20 M of those.

China produces 79 M of those, and exports about 51 M, leaving 28 M for
the domestic market.

Actually, as I keep reading this report, the numbers literally don't add
up, so we're clearly in speculation or "other" mode here, but...

I think it's safe to assume that the plurality of all bikes sold each
year (if not the majority) are singlespeeds.

If you want to focus on the US market, and probably exclude kids' bikes
too, it's probably flat-bar trigger shifters, found on everything above
the cheapest models (which use very cheap-looking thumbies) in
departmentstoreland.

If you're talking about "serious" "road" bikes, it's easy: brifters
brifters brifters. Nothing else even comes close, sales-wise, as a trip
to any drop-bar-oriented LBS would make clear.

The only thing that makes it even close is tri/TT bikes, which usually
use bar-end shifters at the ends of the aerobars. The existence of that
market is probably the only reason Shimano and Campy still make bar-end
shifters, and the fact that their current bar-end design is just a DT
shifter with a bar-end mount is the only reason you can still spec a new
DT indexed shifter.

New bikes with friction shifters? Ask Grant Petersen how many Rivendells
he sells that way, and he's probably around half of all global sales.

Somewhere in my glib summary the Sturmey-Archer hubs of the world may be
screwing things up with their vast mass of still-in-existence indexed
3-speed levers, but I have been typing too long to care.

--
Ryan Cousineau /
"In other newsgroups, they killfile trolls."
"In rec.bicycles.racing, we coach them."

I agree with everything except about flat-bar trigger shifters. in the
sub-$400 arena, twist-grips rule the roost

In article
,
Hank wrote:

On Apr 23, 6:48*pm, Ryan Cousineau wrote:
In article ,
wrote:

wrote:

Brifters without a doubt.

I'm curious.... any stats on how many bikes are sold
each year with al the various systems?

Would be interesting to see what the top dog is sales
wise

About 100 million bikes are made every year:

http://quickrelease.tv/?p=279

I think it's safe to assume that the plurality of all bikes sold each
year (if not the majority) are singlespeeds.

If you want to focus on the US market, and probably exclude kids' bikes
too, it's probably flat-bar trigger shifters, found on everything above
the cheapest models (which use very cheap-looking thumbies) in
departmentstoreland.

I agree with everything except about flat-bar trigger shifters. in the
sub-$400 arena, twist-grips rule the roost

But of course! You are correct, and I forgot all about twist-grip
shifters.

--
Ryan Cousineau http://www.wiredcola.com/
"In other newsgroups, they killfile trolls."
"In rec.bicycles.racing, we coach them."