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The ASEAN market is a huge concern right now in motorcycling, with Southeast Asia proving itself to be a growth center for the motorcycle industry. This year we have already seen Harley-Davidson opening a plant in Thailand, following a move Ducati made a couple years back.

Those moves come not only because of the large riding populations that these countries hold, but also because of the burdensome tariffs that these countries impose on motorcycles.

Following suit now is KTM, as the Austrian company has announced a new production plant in the Philippines, which will service that local market, and the ASEAN region.

The last we checked-in with the Suzuki/Volkswagen divorce, the German automobile maker was ordered by the London Court of International Arbitration to sell its 19.9% stake in the Japanese manufacturer (worth $2.8 billion at the time).

That was back in September 2015, and now that ordered has finally been fulfilled, with Volkswagen completely divesting itself from Suzuki – a move that has been four years in the making.

At Triumph’s EICMA press presentation today, the British brand confirmed that it would have a small-displacement world market bike for the 2015 model year.

Showing a very sporty concept sketch of the machine, Triumph also confirmed that the model would have a single-cylinder engine, be 250cc in displacement, and be manufactured at the company’s new India facility.

Two years ago I lamented on the fact that Harley-Davidson didn’t have a model under 800cc, which among other things, left the company at odds with its efforts to push into the emerging Indian motorcycle market.

Six-months after I wrote that piece, there seemed to be some hope for the Bar & Shield brand, as rumors began to circulate about a 500cc class motorcycle that was being designed with emerging countries in mind. It would seem now, those rumors were true.

Confirming that Harley-Davidson would soon debut a 500cc class motorcycle for the Indian market, Harley-Davidson Motor Company Chief Operating Officer Matthew Levatich revealed last weekend that the Milwaukee-based company had a 500cc model in an advanced stage of development.

Hinting strongly that the machine would be built in India, and be aimed specifically at that market, Levatich also hedged his bets on the possibility of the model arriving on US soil.

In October of last year, we told you about how Ducati Motor Holding was directly taking over its operations in Brazil, and was forming a subsidiary in the South American country. Nine months later now, Ducati do Brasil is officially open for business, and the company’s first showroom floor is in the Avenida Faria Lima of São Paulo.

Helping Ducati side-step the onerous tariffs that come with the Brazil market, the Italian company is continuing its relationship with DAFRA, which runs a complete knock-down (CKD) assembly plant in Manaus, and builds Diavel and Monster 796 motorcycles on Ducati’s behalf.

Ducati do Brasil will be run by Managing Director Ricardo Susini, who will in-turn be assisted by Marco Truzzi as Service & After Sales Manager.

Finally after nine months of dancing with each other around the negotiations table, Germany’s BMW Motorrad and India’s TVS (one of the country’s largest motorcycle manufacturers) have inked an agreement that will see the companies develop sub-500cc motorcycles together.

The announcement is another move that sees Western brands collaborating with Indian companies to develop models suited for India and other developing nations that have high riding populations.

Decisively light in the loafers when it comes to small-displacement motorcycles, the move is a boon for BMW Motorrad, which just recently saw rival KTM surpass it in total volume of sales — a move that was spurred largely by the Austrian company’s partnership with Bajaj and their joint work on the small-displacement Duke series.

Announcing today its “New Medium-term Management Plan” that will cover the next three years of business operations, Yamaha Motor Co.’s strategy is fairly simple, yet also very ambitious. While fighting against the global currency exchange rate with the yen, the Japanese company is hoping to release over 250 new units over its various product segments.

While this goal encompasses all of Yamaha Motors’ product lines, the most obvious additions for the motorcycle division will be Yamaha’s recently announced three-cylinder motorcycles, as well as the now confirmed Yamaha YZF-R250, a 250cc sport bike that will debut in the Indian market.

Unless you have an MBA, Yamaha’s three-year business strategy is a pretty dull read (it might still be a snoozer, even if you do have an MBA), but one Powerpoint slide struck me as interesting (you can see the full presentation here).

As several of our readers pointed out in the latest financial report from Honda, The United States, and North America as a whole, represent just a very small portion of Big Red’s total volume of motorcycle sales. For Honda’s 2011 fiscal year, North America sold a whopping 1.6% of the company’s total motorcycle inventory, while Asia accounted for nearly 79% of Honda’s total sales.

While Honda and other motorcycle manufacturers certainly makes better margins on the units they sell in North America and in Europe, the volume opportunities abroad in emerging markets are far more lucrative for OEMs.

With 1.2 billion people (17% of the global population) and still growing, India is the shining star in emerging markets, so it should come as no surprise that Honda is forecasting that 30% of its business will come from India by 2020, as the Japanese company further increases its presence in Asian markets.

Back in 2009 Suzuki and Volkswagen made some headlines, as the German automaker took a 19.9% stake in the Japanese manufacturer. The basic points of the agreement were that Volkswagen would get access to Suzuki’s small-displacement motors and Indian presence, while the latter would benefit from Volkswagen’s larger-vehicle technologies, etc.

Seemingly however doomed from the start, the partnership in motorcycle circles erroneously spurred some interesting thoughts of a Volkswagen motorcycle coming to fruition. While industry journalists spun gold out of hay, the two behemoth manufacturers failed to come to terms on any of their proposed partnership goals, leaving both parties to wonder why they were interested in each other, let alone financially intwined.

If you follow where the volume and the growth in the motorcycle industry come from, then it should be no surprise to hear that Triumph has announced its intention to enter the Indian market with its motorcycles. The 109-year-old brand based out of Hinckley is just the latest of many major OEMs to enter India, whose high tariffs and exploding market necessitate a local presence by manufacturers in order to be competitive. Rest assured the rest of this post will be devoid of any mention of the irony in the British brand entering into the once British colonial market of India.