There was a company called GSI that did some market research on the manufacturing of glucose test strips a few years ago. I thought some of their findings might be helpful here.
They found that most of the industry was moving to test strips made only from carbon electrodes. Most are now either printed carbon or printed carbon and silver. The Carbon type was was used nearly twice as much as any other type.. and that was back in 2013. That jives with what I'm seeing as a diabetic also. All of the options through my insurance are either the carbon or carbon silver type now. I've tried several times to have them cover the old gold type that i prefer using but they've phased them out from the prescription plan.
Anyway, for those still recovering the old gold and palladium strips I thought some of this might be useful.
http://www.biosensingconference.com/resources/downloads/GSI%20Technologies%20BioSensing%20Technology%202013%20Workshop.pdf