The thing with Emirates is that we all know that they want to buy another 200 A380s, provided the deal is right and they can persuade RR and Airbus to do it. Now that is a serious, serious deal...
Mate ,Airbus would never invest another how many additional billions of euro's in another Neo Project before earning the first dollar on their initial 25 billion dollars ( and counting) they spent on A380 ! Even the outgoing Airbus CEO Louis Gallois was far less optimistic than you..He said that A380 Project the only one we will continue to worry about ..According to many analysts the break even have risen to 700 planes( two years ago it was 450 ) and investing additional 5-6 billions in a new version before reaching that figure would be a disaster Airbus can't afford.
Would Mr Tim Clark participate in development costs? I don't think so? is he ready to sign a firm commitment for 200 aircrafts ? hardly , he might do that say for 100 aircrafts and that is not enough for Airbus to embark on another adventure and it seems that big Europeans Air France, Lufthansa, BA are no longer interested in A380 ..
Airbus would not go ahead with a new version because
1- No other Airline would commit itself at this stage and the biggest airline markets USA and China are still not very enthusiastic
2- The future belongs to twin engine wide bodies as the tremendous success of 777-300ER and A330 clearly demonstrates.
Few years ago, I talked to a Virgin Atlantic maintenance technician who told me
that his airline deeply regrets the decision to buy the A-340-600 instead of 777
and they were loosing millions in long routes like London-Hong Kong- Sydney as a result of this and when I asked him why ? he said that as the launch customer for this aircraft they were offered mouth watering discounts Mr .Branson couldn't refuse.
Well, there must be a reason why 777-300 ER shut down the assembly line of A340....