Originally Posted by
kv501
It's totally possible. But you have to realize that Shimano is interested in making money, nothing more. As long as a lot of people are still willing to pay premium pricing for 9070 and 6780 there's no way they will dilute that by adding another group. Shimano execs aren't in a boardroom somewhere saying, "Hey, there are a bunch of people who want a cheaper Di2 group. How about we give up some of our bigger margins on Ultegra sales to make them happy." I know it's easy to get blinders on because these are products we are interested in, but at the end of the day you have to realize that Shimano doesn't care what we want, they care about how much money we'll give them.
You'll eventually see 105 Di2, but it won't be until there's some sort of external pressure for it. Campy has 3 electric groups, but they don't target the same set of consumers. For new mainstream road bikes (where all the dollars are), it's a SRAM/Shimano world.
No, that's not Shimano's strategy. They don't make nearly as much money off of DA and Ultegra as they do 105. They push tech downmarket for this reason - get people excited when it comes out at the high end, then it looks awesome when they start selling it at the more prosaic 105 pricepoint a couple of years later. They've been doing this for 30 years. 105 Di2 is almost certainly technically possible on some level, but the fact that it still hasn't appeared makes me think that it just isn't feasible for that level of production yet, either because the QC isn't there, or it's economically challenging or both. Look, which do you think generates more revenue for Volkswagen: Bugattis or Golfs? Same idea. It doesn't matter that you have a set of customers willing to pay a huge premium for Dura-Ace or Ultegra Di2, you have so many more willing to pay a lower price for 105 that you swamp the profits you're able to get from the high-rollers.
So, yeah, Shimano is interested in how much money they can get. IF they could offer a quality version of 105 Di2 at a 105-ish pricepoint, they would. But for one reason or another, they simply can't.
EDIT: I just want to be clear that this is all rampant speculation on my part from observation. I have zero inside knowledge. So I could be totally wrong, of course. But that's what I think.