Honda and Suzuki are big in the salt water side of it.

Go to the coast in any of the Gulf states and watch what the guys that use their boats every day to make a living with have hanging off the back. It's 90% F series yamahas. They simply last forever if you half way take care of them. You see more suzuki every year, but most of the Evinrude and Mercury motors in saltwater are on recreation boats with low hours. Many of the guides, crabbers, rig boats etc either experienced or saw how horrible the evinrude ficht motor was. It stranded lots of folks. Evinrude was never going to be a major player in saltwater again after that horrible motor.

I was surprised they survived the Ficht virus.

That used to be the case but Yamaha is behind the times at the moment.
Mercury is 6 weeks behind in producing outboards. Suzuki may be the one who prospers out of this.
Mercury is making engines as fast as they can and most of them go on salt water boats. Of all the builds on THT right now its probably 5 to 1 Merc or Suzuki compared to Yamaha.

Yamaha's big blunder is not fixing their 350. Its a good motor but I've noticed people avoid buying them used since Yamaha decided just replacing flywheels every 100 hours was the way to go.

Maybe they are going electric. Somebody has an 80HP out here already.

They say that we will all be driving (or be driven BY) electric cars in 15 years. Maybe boats are next.