Paul,
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You may be right about the price difference going down but, frankly, I doubt it will: Absolute axis encoders are a niche within a niche.
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We always have to remember that the market for astronomy products at the consumer and educational (as opposed to research) end is only about $300M per year. That's nothing: A single 777 costs that much. And according to some market studies, nearly 50% of that market is controlled by one company now: Celestron. The point being that the chances of reaching economies of scale, which is what it would take to drop the price down, is very low.
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Other indicators of the small size of the market are that when Sky and Tel was sold it barely drew $3M. And it only took a $18M court judgement to kill Meade this last time and for Orion to buy them.
And then Orion went under. Numbers like $3M and $18M are peanuts.
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My hats really off to people like Losmandy, OpTech Inc, AstroPhysics, and Planewave for having the guts to set up businesses for such a small market composed all too often of nitpicky customers.
I continue to be amazed at how many people launch small companies in this market. We're all lucky they do.?They must really love what they are doing.
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Best regards,
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Mark C
