This maybe true of consumer product companies, but a lot of "hardware" companies aren't either consumer or product companies, they are service companies. For e

This maybe true of consumer product companies, but a lot of "hardware" companies aren't either consumer or product companies, they are service companies. For example, SpaceX builds neat hardware, but sells launch services. They deliver a complete service with their own hardware + software + services. This is becoming more and more common model in many industries, and is a much harder business to copy.