Styx
Member
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2014
- Messages
- 3,297
I agree to a point. Which is why I say, and the numbers support, that Glock is slowly losing market shares and is no longer as dominate as many in the gun community and in this thread keep pontificating...Glock is to striker fired pistols as Kleenex is to tissues.
When you have a runny nose do you ask for a Kleenex or a tissue? Regardless of which word you use almost everyone would hand you a tissue from whatever box was closest.
Glock is the trailblazer that introduced America to the plastic, striker fired pistol. They followed Henry Ford's manufacturing model fairly closely. Ford introduced incremental changes in the Model T improving it while lowering it's selling price. Glock has also made incremental change but has not lowered it's prices even though the manufacturing cost has dropped. This has made room for competitors to take advantage of Glock beta testing the striker fired pistol market and offering more features at a lower cost.
Glock has been slow to make changes such as interchangeable backstraps and single stack models again leaving the door open for the competition. S&W just announced that they have made 3,000,000 M&P Shields. Even Henry Ford knew when to quit producing the Model T and introduce the Model A due to improvements in car design and increased competition.
Many are still living in the past with when it comes to Glock. You'd think that Glock still had exclusive rights on being the one and only reliable striker fired polymer pistol as well as the only gun manufacturer who has good quality control listening to some Glock owners. You'd also think that Glock had, at the very least, 60% of the civilian market share with everyone of the other major firearm companies fighting for crumbs within the last 40%... GunnyUSMC even has gone as far to say that the S&W M&P line basically isn't selling well or no where near as well as Glock.
Again, the facts do not back up perception. S&W and Ruger sell almost 2 million handguns a year. Taurus, Sig, and Springfield sell a significant amount too. CZ, Canik, Walther, and HK have become popular as well with their polymer offerings. Based on numbers, I'd say that Glock has dropped to be around 25% or so of the civilian market with S&W and Ruger being right there with them. As you already touched on, the fact that other companies are also making a product that has similar fit and finish, reliability, quality control, and customer service with similar or more features for, in some cases, half the price of a Glock is slowly but surely deteriorated Glocks dominance over time. Glock being "slow to change" to adopt market trends has also allowed it's competitors to take on that " trailblazing " role, and now it's Glock who is usually always lagging behind and is late to the party.
With that said, as long as Glock has the L.E. and military market, they will continue to be one of the most popular firearm manufacturers in the U.S. If history repeats itself, sooner or later the L.E. market might start to transition to something else like a more modular design for example. If Glock loses it's dominance in the aforementioned markets, doesn't drop their prices, and continues to be "slow to change", I don't see them remaining as popular I the civilian market either...