It's way too early to be making blanket statements about Guimbal eating Robinson's lunch. Certainly the R22 market is so mature that additional sales are slow. Meanwhile, the G2 does admittedly fill a niche. Once that niche is filled the G2 production rate will become as low as the R22 rate, probably lower, since it is a niche machine, in the US, anyway.
The real questions are what is that niche, and how big is it? Clearly it is a better choice if someone is going to know they are transitioning straight into a larger, fenestron equipped machine. I can only speak from a narrow, US based perspective on this, but that market is quite small. The rich guys I see coming in for lessons have their hearts set on a 44 or maybe a 66, possibly even a 505, but that's it. Like a lot of wealthy guys they only want to buy a new machine and would turn their nose up, right or wrong, at a used 120 or 130. That said, they might still choose to train in a G2 because of the "lux" factor. It does look, feel and smell a lot nicer than a 22. But it won't help them with the transition to the two-bladed products they'll eventually own. Meanwhile, the guys who are actually wealthy enough to be buying a $2M USD machine, or more, are also wealthy enough to hire some young pilot to fly it for them for peanuts. So they are not looking to learn to fly.
That brings us to the "young person looking to make it as a helicopter pilot" category. This is the largest part of the market and in the US it's all about price in this regime. If you told this market they could save $10/hr by flying the R22 with the tattiest interior you better believe they'll be fighting over who gets to book that ship. So the G2 will make little if any inroads into that part of the market.
Finally we come to the most interesting part of the US market: the fatties (and some folks that are legitimately large, like The Rock
). And this being the US, where everything is super-sized, we do have them. Right now they have to train in the 44. But the G2 would be a good option for them given it's increased useful load over the 22, and it would be less expensive than the 44.
So what will the US G2 market look like? I predict it will consist of those who legitimately expect to jump right into a larger fenestron ship (a very tiny number), wealthy folks who just like the look/feel (a fair number, but not the largest US student demographic), and people of a certain size (a small number). Meanwhile the majority of the market will continue to be driven almost entirely by cost, and for that you cannot beat the R22. So we will see continued sales of the G2 in the US for a few years until it goes just as flat as the R22 sales figures, and R22s will still dominate the US training fleet.
P.S. Maff--the slagging is because before SFAR 73 took effect in the US, Robinsons were being crashed at a significant rate. Since SFAR 73 Robinson loss and fatality rates in the US have been commensurate with the US helicopter fleet as a whole, but there is an old guard who will never forget, and never let anyone else forget, either. That said, it is the lightest weight, lowest inertial helicopter, with the least safety margins. Nevertheless, even though it is typically flown by the least experienced pilots, it seems to do just fine safety-wise in the US. (since the late 90's, anyway). Outside of the US, particularly in certain countries, people continue to crash them with remarkable frequency. This also plays into people's attitudes towards them.