WhyFi

Frankly, I don't really buy the notion that it's an "industry forced change." I mean, it may eventually be that for some, but it's not the case right now and I don't buy it for the market as a whole. It wasn't like BOOM - rim brakes are gone and discs are all you can get.

It's probably safe assume that bike companies are still trying to sell as many bikes as they can and, if they noticed an unmet demand for rim brake models, they'd step it up. Disc brake models were slowly rolled out over the course of years and, if buyer were tepid about adopting discs, I think that would have been reflected in stock manufactured the following years. As it is, we seem to get more disc options every year and fewer rim options every year; That leads me to assume that the market as a whole has embraced discs or, at the very least, they're in no way a deal-breaker. Anecdotally, of the people that I ride with, all but two or three have already gone disc and wouldn't go back to rim. Of those that haven't transitioned, well, they just haven't bought anything recently; none has cited discs as a reason for holding out nor have they purchased a new bike with rim brakes.