4 ms·
niche players can’t exist This is where the world has gone astray. We would be much better off with a thousand three comma companies taking the place of a sin
by nitrogen 5y ago
niche players can’t exist
This is where the world has gone astray. We would be much better off with a thousand three comma companies taking the place of a single four comma company.
Also, niches used to be considered socially acceptable. What has taken all the air out of the room?
- gameswithgo 5y agoSure but in domains like running a streaming tv service, or building a phone, catering to a small subset of users means you are a smaller company, and then it is very hard to build a decent phone, or create something like netflix.
- nitrogen 5y agoBut why is that? Phones are more expensive at retail and more profitable than ever. Why should it be so difficult to make one even with a billion dollars? And it wasn't hard to run a video rental store 25 years ago. What changed?
- Hermitian909 5y agoPhone profit margins have been declining even for Apple (about ~60%) and are already fairly thin for the rest of the market (~13%). The problem is that getting the kind of customization we're talking about here probably means rolling your own phone OS which is a non-starter. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-phone-profits-apple-66-samsung-17-everyone-else-unlucky-13/?sh=5973487a2ff3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-...
- nitrogen 5y agoThe only must-have feature from a given new phone for me is the upgraded camera. In most other regards, reusing stuff from previous generations where profitability peaked should be fine, giving a dozen niche manufacturers enough clout to build customizations off a common base.