I haven't heard anything about sales on a national level, but I can tell on the local level here in my town, Bobcat rules. I looked at Cat and Case before buying and neither dealership had the inventory or attachments that the Bobcat dealer had. The Case dealer didn't really seem interested in selling me a machine. He would have had to order one in and just quoted me MSRP + frieght for the price. I figured if he had to special order it in and the sale was guarnteed, he could come down on the price. The similar sized and equipped machine was $5000-$7000 more than the Bobcat machine I bought. I was looking at compact excavators last year and Cat did seem to be motivated to get into this market. Their similar sized machine was about $10000 less than the comparable Bobcat machine. Both the Bobcat and Cat machines were comparable in workmanship and performance.
I don't watch TV much, but I did see an interesting commercial the other day. It started off showing a blade from a large dozer (D10?) pushing a pile of dirt, then it switched to a smaller machine pushing dirt also. It kept switching back and forth until it finally panned out and showed the D10 and a small Cat skidsteer head to head. On the end of the commercial, it showed about 5 compact Cat machines (rubber tire loader, track loader, excavator, etc...) driving in a line, then all the machines stopped and turned toward the camera in unison. Pretty cool. I hope to see a Bobcat commercial in the future.
