they had the opportunity to compete with the other brands' 4 stroke, and they poorly chose to continue with a heavy, overly complex 2 stroke design that costs more than a comparable 4 stroke.
Secondly, the 25hp market at least in this area has been on fire for many years, in other words a lot of dealers don't even carry 30+ or 20- motors, they carry 25hp because most of the lakes/rivers are fine to use a 25 on (with a few exceptions) a jon. Then duck hunting. Don't even get me started there. The 25 is king here. But when you have a $4800 etec 25 and burns oil and gas (although it mixes itself) and has a nasty tendency to eat fuel pumps every so often, and when you're out of warranty, $600 a piece for those pumps gets real expensive. It also weighs more than a 25hp yamaha, a lot more. If it were a few pounds it wouldn't be a big deal but close to 50 lbs difference? The entire allure of the 2 stroke outboard is lightweight, cheap and etec is not either one of them. Dealers are few and far between. Marketing them hasn't been great either, that's all they had to sell was "less complex" (which is a lie) X% fewer moving parts (which isn't untrue but they don't tell you the whole truth either) and it came back to bite them in the butt.
A lot of times you can look at the used market and see what is happening. A 25hp suzuki 4 stroke, 25hp yamaha 4 stroke, 25hp honda 4 stroke, you cannot find them at all on any of the marketplaces here, and if for some reason you do, they bring a lot more money (I sold mine for $2500, and it was approaching 20 years old). But you can find TONS of 25hp johnnyrude's and blown up etecs. I'd say dirt cheap but $1500 for a blowed up etec is not cheap. Most of the Johnny's are going for $800-$1200 if they're nice and they run. They aren't popular here. You rarely find a suzuki/yamaha/honda 4 stroke for sale because people keep them, they are mostly trouble free lifetime motors like the old johnnyrudes were. ETEC is not an old johnnyrude. It is a sophisticated fuel system and control system applied to an old school 2 stroke motor; which the complexities of the fuel/control systems is where the cost came in, but unfortunately because of government "push", the old carb omc 25hp 2 stroke motors had to go away and brp/etec decided to reinvent the wheel. Similar to jet ski markets, my old FICHT Kawasaki STX 1100DI was a smooth running engine but it was not popular due to cost of ownership as well as the then-new 4 strokes coming into the market, which blowed the old 2 stroke away in terms of responsiveness, smooth/quiet running, and most importantly fuel usage. An STX1100 DI would EMPTY the 14 gallon fuel tank in a little under an hour. TLDI is somewhat similar to the etec.
Couple rivers local are shallow and jets are popular. When you see a 2 stroke jet whether it be an etec or tldi or whatever, you can hear them for miles. The 4 stroke jets are noisy too but it's a different kind of noise; much more muffled. On those waters, yamaha owns the market, period. Rare to see any other brand unless it's a 9.9 or smaller, then you'll see a few old johnnyrudes and a few mercuries with a tohatsu throwed in once in a while.
