Great Question... and one I think about a lot. I work for a company called BamCore -- we make prefab home materials out of bamboo (wall systems for right now, but hoping to expand our product portfolio to include the entire building envelope). I have tried to outline the below with reasons why today bamboo is still considered niche in the west, and why I am so bullish on it breaking that mold in the future.

1. Supply of the good stuff is limited. There are thousands of species of bamboo, but only a handful are good for creating traditional buildings and other highly valuable commercial products. Bamboo forests make up about 3-4% of total forest cover (30-40mil ha), and the majority of it is in India and China, which means western access to the fiber is limited, and access to the really valuable fiber, is even more limited.
2. Knowledge diffusion has been limited. Because of Bamboo's geography, its mainly used in the east, and is often seen as a "poor man's" timber... an unfortuante stereotype we are trying to get around. Also, if you ask anyone what they think about bamboo in the west, they will invariably say something like "oh, we had bamboo in our backyard and we just couldn't get rid of it!!" Running bamboo, different than clumping bamboo, are more common in the temperate countries in the west and give the fiber a reputation for being rather frustrating...
3. Western timber companies create very tall barriers to entry. Companies like Weyerhaueser are massive... they, unfortunately, could rather easily shut down a budding bamboo plantation.

For all intents and purposes, bamboo is a cottage industry in most western countries. Yes, the bamboo utensils, plates, and high-end flooring are cool, but until there is a truly amazing commercial opportunity for us to showcase bamboo fiber's quite amazing properties (tensile and flexural strength in particular), timber will always be cheaper, and easier.

Now, why I think the tides may change for bamboo (particularly the Guadua, Dendrocalamus Asper, Bambusa Bambos and Textilis species).

1. Bamboo is much better than wood at sequestering carbon. over the past year, I, and a team of researchers, have undertaken a life cycle comparison of wood and bamboo's carbon sequestration effectiveness when productizing the fiber. The results were astounding and were somewhat unexpected. Bamboo's incredibly short time to maturity (6-7 years) and annual growth dynamics make it a far better sequestration engine than wood, which normally takes between 25 and 70 years. It also turns out that clear-cutting, the most popular form of harvesting wood fiber, is actually rather catastrophic for carbon flowing from growth to captured in product. In fact, on average only about 35% of the carbon that a tree stand captures makes it into a product (pulp, osb, paper, etc). Bamboo is never clear cut, because it grows rhizomally (its technically a grass). And therefore keeps a much higher amount of the carbon sequestered when being harvested and productized. The world seems to be somewhat waking up to the threat of climate change (unfortunately our president is still asleep)... we hope bamboo might be able to ride some of those tailwinds into becoming a more mainstream fiber source. There are also a few reforestation projects worldwide that contemplate bamboo projects.

2. There are smart people working on making bamboo fiber more popular. Besides BamCore, there have popped up a bunch of different bamboo-based companies in the US, and there are 100,000s of acres of bamboo being planted currently in Alabama by a company called Resource Fiber.

3. bamboo tech is improving rapidly. BamCore has developed a few different patented processes to make the bamboo stem into walls. Other companies are working on composites that would be as light as carbon fiber and completely bullet proof. The knowledge of how to use the fiber is still so young compared to wood, the only way to go is up.

4. Building and energy laws are going green fast. California and other states are adopting very green policy goals over the coming decades. BamCore's prefab wall system is already code commpliant, and the bamboo's natural thermal, air transmissivity, acoustic, tensile, compressive, flexural (etc etc) make it fit well with the goals of policy makers.

But, we shall see how it all pans out.

Resources:
https://bamcore.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/BamCore-and-G...
https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/ne_gtr343.pdf
https://bamcore.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/attachment-1....