5 ms·
2012 is the year third party OEMs start to go extinct. First (and always) Apple, now Microsoft, soon Google/Motorola. There may be some niche markets left over
by jsz0 14y ago
2012 is the year third party OEMs start to go extinct. First (and always) Apple, now Microsoft, soon Google/Motorola. There may be some niche markets left over for third party OEMs but otherwise I think they're done. No wonder HP wanted out of the PC industry. Maybe they knew something we didn't?
- bicknergseng 14y agoHP went through 4 CEOs, bought and dismantled Palm for no reason and at great capital loss, announced and then rescinded their departure from the PC industry. It's well known HP doesn't know anything about anything. Agreed that OEMs should go away.
- pcwalton 14y agoWhy do you want them to go away? I think generally industry consolidation is a bad thing for consumers.
- notatoad 14y agoIndustry consolidation is only a good thing when the competition it provides drives innovation. When all the players in an industry wallow around at the same level of mediocrity, that isn't really market diversity. The current tablet market is not a healthy one. It has apple at one end, and a theoretical other end that doesnt really matter. Squeezing out 15 companies that don't matter to make room for one competitor which has a chance is not a bad thing.
- greedo 14y agoIt's a narrow consolidation however, that's been ongoing for quite a while. Do you really miss Packard Bell, or any of the other interchangeable Windows OEMs? Sony, for all it's eclectic design decisions is the only memorable one out of the bunch and it typically delivers overpriced junk that has more lock in than anyone wants to remember.
- bicknergseng 14y agoI don't think of it as consolidation... I think of it sorta in the way Joel describes consumer routers in his last post http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/06/because-everyone-still-needs-a-router.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/06/because-everyone-st.... There's a lot I'm working out in my head about this, so let me spit out some points for you to consider: - the increasing move to *aaS (look at OnLive, for example) - the reports that MS wants to charge >$60 for Windows RT licenses even on <$500 devices - the difficulty companies like Google and MS have competing toe to toe with Apple's vertically integrated devices - the existence of bloatware.
- alaskamiller 14y agoIBM saw this coming 8 years ago.
- celticjames 14y agoSo this is hardware manufactured and sold under the Microsoft brand? Wow. That's a big re-alignment. I think you are right about this being the endgame for third-party builders. Anyone know anything about this side of Microsoft? I assume the actual fab is done by anonymous Asian companies. How much of the design (nuts and bolts engineering, I mean) is done in-house and how much is contracted to established hardware manufacturers. (i.e. Does Samsung or the like have a piece of this pie?)
- spiralpolitik 14y agoThis is the big takeaway from this. Microsoft knows that Windows 8 has to succeed. Clearly it does not trust Dell, HP, Lenovo et al to build machines that shows the OS in its best light to help it succeed. So long and thanks for all the fish OEMs. Right now Meg Whitman is probably regretting deep sixing WebOS.
- krashidov 14y ago"Clearly it does not trust Dell, HP, Lenovo et al to build machines that shows the OS in its best light to help it succeed." Who could blame them? Third party laptop vendors have been manufacturing crap for the last decade. The only exception is the thinkpad line(I own one), which mainstream consumers see as ugly. Hardware wise, every other laptop manufacturer has done little to impress or innovate, they're all about two years behind Apple, and any time they try to innovate they have all failed miserably. On the software side, many of them bloat an excellent Windows 7 with tons of crapware. I wonder if Microsoft can compete with Apple on the manufacturing side. Apple's manufacturing operations are highly polished and streamlined. While Microsoft, who do manufacture some very decent keyboards, webcams, and other accessories, are relatively inexperienced with manufacturing consumer electronics on a massive scale. Edit: For Some reason I forgot about Xbox and Kinect. So yes, they do have extensive manufacturing experience, but boy was the Original Xbox a disaster with the RROD.
- bobsil1 14y agoSamsung 900x is pretty sexy.
- mrdodge 14y ago> Edit: For Some reason I forgot about Xbox and Kinect. So yes, they do have extensive manufacturing experience, but boy was the Original Xbox a disaster with the RROD. There's manufacturing consumer electronics and then there's manufacturing consumer electronics profitably. This is where Apple shines and Microsoft shows that they need to learn a thing or two. Not only is Apple building far more iPad/iPhone/iPod/Mac than Microsoft is building Xbox, its hardware divisions are profit machines whereas Microsoft makes comparatively little profit on its hardware. Actually, The entertainment/devices division had a loss of $225 million last quarter.
- rbanffy 14y ago> 2012 is the year third party OEMs start to go extinct That's very unlikely for Google and Motorola. Google needs the market fragmented so that Apple doesn't dominate it. In order to maximize it, they need OEMs making slightly incompatible devices so that de jure standards dominate over de facto ones.
- spiralpolitik 14y agoActually I'd say its more likely for Android OEMs. Currently Samsung is the only Android vendor making money, everybody else is barely breaking even or is losing money. At some point basic economics will kick in forcing the vendors to get out of the market while they still can.