It may or may not be true in the metric market, but as long as the Harley Davidson marketing machine is still alive and well, there will always be a cruiser market.
Agreed, but with fuel prices and the credit crunch hurting the economy, they are slipping and have been for a year or two.
People can't go out and refi their homes and pull 20-40k out of them to buy toys like they have been able to for the last 6 years.
People are being forced to think more practically now, and have to consider if they really NEED that 25k full-dress bagger with cruise and stereo, or if they can get to work and back on a 500.
It scares me when "industry reps" start talking about what the future will be, because their vision of the future is represented by a very narrow mindset driven by personal feelings and corporate profit targets.
It's cheaper to slap a bunch of plastic on a frame and call it a touring bike than it is to slap on a bunch of chrome hard parts.
It scares me because for those of us with body shapes and sizes that do not fit within THEIR tightly defined "normal" (5'9, 170 pounds), we end up with products that are not comfortable.