TL;DR: hardware becomes software, IP erosion and democratisation of manufacturing changes design, design process, distribution and business models. 3D printing

TL;DR: hardware becomes software, IP erosion and democratisation of manufacturing changes design, design process, distribution and business models. 3D printing involves the digitisation of (some/parts of) physical objects, which means that the manufacturing and design industry will face the same challenges and opportunities as the music/entertainment/publishing industries. As the article suggested, we'll see a leveler playing field and IP issues. Where it gets interesting is how these two things influence the life of a physical product. Hardware will become more like software. This means open source hardware will become a viable alternative and threat to existing proprietary "hardware" companies in certain industries. I suspect that we will see history repeat with a concentrated market-don't-share of retail portals (iDesigns, Google Blueprint...) and design brands in the hands of a few and a long tail cottage industry will play out in the hardware industries that are suited to 3D printing. Having said that, because the way physical products are consumed/used is more diverse than software and because of inherent differences to software, the future of hardware will play out in a more varied way to software. For example, consider a high-tech Ikea, in which currently unprintable parts (electronics, batteries etc) are mailed out to you while you print and assemble the rest yourself, choosing from the 25 official designs or the 3286 unwarrantied designs. You won't stick out of the crowd, but a DUbuntu LTS design is a safe bet. The price reductions (massive) will justify the labour, even for non-hackers. Manufacturing (think much of Asia) will need to reinvent itself as a design studio. We leave industrialisation further behind as manufacturing capability becomes a given and design becomes the differentiator.