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In a number of ways this echoes the early microcomputer industry (thinking the 1970s-80s), when dozens of competing and incompatible standards existed. Atari, A

In a number of ways this echoes the early microcomputer industry (thinking the 1970s-80s), when dozens of competing and incompatible standards existed. Atari, Apple, Commodore, Amiga, just to name a few. And as the industry neared middle age in the 1990s, shopping for a "PC Clone" was a cornucopia of options: a copy of PC Shopper was hundreds of pages thick, each with ads for "custom made" PC clones "built to your specifications". Lead times of weeks, hundreds of case, motherboards, CPU, RAM and Video card options existed... and prices were in the $2000+. Now it's settled down to a few big players who essentially sell poorly-differentiated commodity items for paper-thin margins. It is to be expected as an industry matures. A company must choose where to place itself. Go after the high-end boutique market and risk pricing yourself out (if one can't communicate the price/value argument to customers), or become another "me too" supplier in a race to the bottom, following all the same steps as the competition, facing extinction due to lack of margin.

deepnet 10y ago
Mature free markets that entail paper thin margins are naturally disrupted and conquered. Jobs had seen Kay's Dynabook at Parc and had some vision of what portable computers could offer. Apple phones made $250 per phone, even with less than 0.5% of the market Jobs had already won as Nokia et al. made ~pence per phone. Cartels and Monopolies naturally aggregate to protect incumbents from the needs & desires of the customer and society from the painful costs of over rapid progress, yet like great empires companies decline when their owners lose touch with their daily customers needs, demands or desires. Intellectual property rights are not natural rights but a social contract, providing temporary monopoly in exchange for social benefit. Rinse and repeat.

deepnet 10y ago

Mature free markets that entail paper thin margins are naturally disrupted and conquered. Jobs had seen Kay's Dynabook at Parc and had some vision of what portable computers could offer. Apple phones made $250 per phone, even with less than 0.5% of the market Jobs had already won as Nokia et al. made ~pence per phone. Cartels and Monopolies naturally aggregate to protect incumbents from the needs & desires of the customer and society from the painful costs of over rapid progress, yet like great empires companies decline when their owners lose touch with their daily customers needs, demands or desires. Intellectual property rights are not natural rights but a social contract, providing temporary monopoly in exchange for social benefit. Rinse and repeat.