Well, probably not fallen for that kind of misconception - no.
While one may of course fall for relativizing by watching out for cables with only few sales exclusively. - But there's plenty of stuff and plenty of sellers, more fancy, less fancy, sometimes laughable builds like those featuring gold plated guide grooves at the "male" XLR plugs - where there is no electrical connection. - Not this one here below, this is just to show that it does add up somewhat, all across A/E, all across sellers. Sure, this is only one more random item just as the one from your example. Of course we don't know how long a listing lasts. The better the buyer's feedback, the less likely to simply relist a "spoilt" item once again.
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That's a total of 147 cables that the seller sold, distributed among cables with XLR sockets and plugs, and further divided into eight different lengths.
That means fewer than 10 cables per version.
You're forgetting something fundamental.
For every HiFi device sold with a Pentaconn 4.4mm connector, there are a few thousand devices sold with XLR and RCA connectors.
The same applies to these 4.4mm device cables. For every 4.4mm device cable sold, there are several thousand XLR and RCA cables sold.
That's what you call a niche market.
And all the cables from the pro audio sector aren't even included in that figure.
These 4.4mm Pentaconn cables for device connections generate an extremely small amount of revenue worldwide. Moreover, the prices on AliExpress are very low; I'm seeing about €15 for a 0.5m cable.
Furthermore, iFi cables are readily available everywhere, even at hundreds of iFi retailers.
There is absolutely no supply shortage.
Global sales of HiFi and Pro Audio cables are in the billions. A few thousand 4.4mm device cables have no impact on that.
The major cable manufacturers have certainly done their homework and aren't offering these cables because the demand is far too low.
Perhaps that will change in the future.
But even then, these specific cables will affect these manufacturers' sales by significantly less than 1%, perhaps not even by 0.1%.
