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Rochester NY resident since 1982, Kodak's peak employment year. Wrote embedded software for Xerox for a couple years around 2000. My belief is that companies
by vibrolax 10y ago
Rochester NY resident since 1982, Kodak's peak employment year. Wrote embedded software for Xerox for a couple years around 2000. My belief is that companies like Kodak, Xerox, HP, IBM, etc. have business structures that cannot survive in a low margin business. These companies drove and thrived with technological change for decades. The leadership could not accept the change of their key lines of business into low margin commodities.
- rgovind 10y agoIf that is true, I believe Google, MS wold have a similar problem but Amazon won''t
- Spooky23 10y agoMicrosoft seems to finally get it. We'll see how it works out.
- vibrolax 10y agoGoogle's cash cow product is knowledge of people's behaviors. Can equivalent product be built for much less, or be much easier to use? MS seems eager to build a similar business. Amazon store seems built to survive at a near zero margin. Maybe AWS as well. I think Amazon's ultimate success is predicated on eventually developing a higher margin business. It seems many previous businesses founded on the low cost producer strategy, e.g. Dell, uses it as a means to get scale, then emphasise higher margin products and services.