Is that likely to ever occur unless the various model train companies choose to use a common supplier of decoders and that supplier also standardizes on a single decoder IC?
The survey is the manufacturers inventory. Model railroad manufacturers are cottage industries, they are not mega corporations like GE, United States Steel or even the class one railroads. The model railroad manufacturers cannot afford to have thousands of dollars worth of inventory sitting on their shelves. If DCC + Sound was not selling, they would not be selling it. Something to think about, companies like Atlas do not produce the locomotives and rolling stock they sell, they contract with a company in China to produce their products. Atlas has to pay the entire production cost to the Chinese company up front, before the production run. They are not going to do that hoping a model will sell. This is another reason pre-orders are becoming very popular. Today there are only a few companies left that still own their own production factory, Kader is the largest and they're the company that owns Bachmann. Another is Kato, plus believe it or not Kato USA has to schedule their production runs with the parent Kato factory in Japan. Weather you choose to believe it or not is up to you, but in the not to distant future all models will be dual mode DCC equipped and half of those orders will also include sound. DC silent is becoming a thing of the past just like Athearn Blue Box kits.
Many manufactures are already starting to use a common supplier SoundTraxx. https://soundtraxx.com/factory/index.php
Atlas is using ESU in their N Scale line for sound and were using NCE in their motion only decoders last I purchased, not sure about HO. Broadway Limited uses the Paragon decoder from QSI.
But these decoders are very basic. One can argue extremely basic as they don't support some of the common CVs that even basic decoders from Digitrax, NCE, TCS, etc. have. They are missing one of the three start, mid, high CVs (don't remember which, either mid or high) and can't support a speed curve. Many throw these decoders out and replace it with one of the name brands, else it becomes next to impossible to speed match. So if you fit into that group, and not all do, your cost has now has just increased as you are throwing away something that was factored into the price.
Figures that I just found four brand new sets of the Life-Like FAs in the archives... they're great. They can pull the paint off a wall. Still great entry-level units for those just starting out. Brokemoto, I have a NYC cigar band FA, I believe it was a Bev-Bel special run on the Atlas/Roco offering. Can't validate that right now.
