SRAM Acquires PowerTap – Power Meter Times are changing

I was aware of some internal goings-on at PowerTap in recent months and I was wondering only two days ago who was going to buy them. Well, now we know it’s SRAM/Quarq.

Source: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/04/sram-acquires-powertap-what-it-means-for-both-brands-and-consumers.html

It looks like the products that the customer sees will proceed in broadly the same direction with the same numbering. So we can hope for a new P3 pedal and G4 hub. Behind the scenes there will be the usual rationalisation and consolidation that perhaps shouldn’t trouble most of us too much.

For me, the real interest of this story is how it reflects on future changes in the market.

Whilst the overall power meter market is probably maturing and perhaps not growing quite so much as in recent years,  the real trend here is that groupset manufacturers will start to bundle in powermeters with new bikes. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or a bike scientist) to work out that this will start out at the higher price points and then trickle down over the years to lower price points as economies of scale and competition kick in. Sure you can develop this technology internally or, instead, you can ‘just’ buy a company who has already done much of the hard work.

Currently Shimano have the R9100-P power meter .

Campagnolo are Italian and don’t have a PM (yet). Are there any other Italian companies out there who make power meters who might want to tie up? Just a thought (actually a guess…I have no inside info just to be clear). Actually it would be an expensive thought if Campagnolo wanted to buy Favero’s ASSIOMA as Favero are doing well at the moment. Plus don’t forget that Campy would probably want a similar technical solution as that delivered by Shimano. Pedals are not part of the groupset, although that doesn’t preclude pedals from being part of the OEM offering to the bike manufs.