Well, you have to hand it to Boeing.
Whilst industry comment and interest focussed on the A380 and how Boeing had missed the boat, Boeing was doing what classic strategy says to do, ie, don't ever tell your opponents your true strengths.
Viewed in another way, they waited until Airbus was utterly comitted to a financial undertaking of such enormous proportions before presenting this airplane to the market.
Boeing have effectively retained the element of surprise, eliminated potential competition, maintained secrecy and snagged the serious money for the next generation...just like the B747.
Not easy to do in today's world of industrial espionage, share holder demand for short term profit and other external pressures we can only dream about.
And Airbus have even offerred the A380 at such low costs, locked in now there are orders, just to make sure they got a market for their product.
Wow, touche to Boeing.
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