Very cool. It would be interesting to know how many of those sales were used vs new.
With the guitars coming from Fender these days, I'm not at all surprised. I had the same issue looking for a new Strat this year, that I had looking for an LP about 10 years ago. Trying to go for something authentic (and we're talking before "play authentic" was even a thing!!!) and attempted to find something from the traditional brand in both cases, but just couldn't find something with the quality and sound both on par in one guitar. 10 years ago were rough days for Gibson, and I couldn't find an LP that had "the sound" and also played and stayed in tune, had clean construction and attention to detail. This year, looking at strats, same thing. Inconsistent tone even between the same exact models, sharp fret ends, necks choked out tonally from drowning in excess lacquer. Ended up back on a PRS in both cases, and can also say that in both of those periods, of many guitars, I only played one G or F that really stood out as having it all. For Gibson, it was a Bill Kelliher Explorer that a friend owned, and for Fender, an American Original Strat. Also, other than that American Original, most of the Squiers felt and sounded better than the MIA's. But in either case, I could pick up any PRS in the store and not have any of those problems.
I might have a problem with PRS making SC594's and SS's if F and G were pumping out some high quality guitars and PRS was just trying to get in on the action to make a buck. But in both cases, at the time the models were introduced, it was at least in part due to legitimately not being able to easily or consistently get a good guitar from the other brand. Now that some time has passed, we're starting to see Gibson focus more on quality, which I think has some to do with them losing sales to PRS. Hopefully Fender will do the same after losing sales to the Silver Sky.