Things like Arduino and 3D-printing are making it easier to prototype actual devices, and imho the effect of these is disruptive as it greatly increases the num

Things like Arduino and 3D-printing are making it easier to prototype actual devices, and imho the effect of these is disruptive as it greatly increases the number of people who can develop ideas and it greatly increases the ability to iterate. Net-net is more innovation. So even if the rest is still hard (design for manufacturing and manufacturing at scale) there's still a disruption going on relative to the way things were a few years ago. Remember that 15 or 16 years ago, if you wanted to sell something online, you needed to buy servers, configure software, scan film and upload image files, etc. It's gotten easier and so will hardware manufacturing, because the demand is there.