iskandar taib wrote:
GMan4911 wrote:
Because DHS is late to the game with their D40+ ball and had to price it aggressively to gain market share. They won't gain market share as rapidly if they priced it at the same point as seamless.
The ABS ball might be a recent development but remember, DHS has a large "installed base". Those people (the ones who run tournaments, especially, since there's a big knock-on effect) who were using DHS balls before (a lot of this was due to sponsorship arrangements) will switch to the new DHS ball. And there were a lot of them, especially outside China.
Seamless balls aren't really that expensive, once you know all the three star balls are "all the same", you can go around choosing the cheapest ones (Minkow comes to mind). Mind you, there is a "placebo effect" when it comes to brands - I took out some iPong balls once (big sale at the WTTC last year..
) and everyone said they were "lousy". A week later they were playing with a XSF ball (which they thought was great), and I brought out the iPong balls and had them compare them side by side. Conclusion - exact same ball. Same sound, same bounce. XSF balls did go up a lot in price some time back, but there are so many brands to choose from. The seamless "super training ball" from Minkow is excellent, by the way, we played with that for a while. Makes me wonder what makes a three star ball a three star ball - maybe those are the ones that are actually subject to testing and pass the tests. Some of the ones that fail (badly) get crushed and recycled, some become one star balls, but I'll bet most one star balls are simply batches that are NOT tested. Testing (which involves humans) is expensive. If this is the case, then a lot of one star balls are actually of three star quality. The old Double Fish celluloid ones were, I can't tell the difference between them and the three star. Have three unopened boxes of 100, still..
Iskandar
The preferred ball, regardless of price, still seems to be the Nittaku Premium 40+ ball, but pricey at about $3/ball. Cheapest price for seamless balls I can find is about $1/ball, average is about $1.66/ball. The seamless ball is a very good ball and it has captured a large share of the market because it is generally durable and is about 50% of the price of the Nittaku. People are willing to ignore the slight differences in play quality not just because of the price but also because the play quality and durability of the other seamed balls were pretty dismal.
The DHS D40+ ball is a game changer though. It is also a very good ball, it's playing characteristics are very similar to the NP40+, close enough that most people won't notice much difference. Durability is very good, at least as good the NP40+ and seamless balls. At $0.56/ball, it's available at roughly 50% of the seamless ball. Assuming each ball is well liked, it doesn't take a genius to figure out which one people will start buying more of. The price of the seamless ball won't drop until it's market share starts to erode and DHS, with it's aggressive pricing, is going to make that happen sooner rather than later.